CSUN Extends Its Reach

Public universities count community service as one of their missions, right up there with teaching and research. Cal State Northridge is no exception. One of the ways it fulfills this mission is its service to people with hearing impairments.

CSUN’s National Center on Deafness provides interpreting services for the campus’ nearly 300 deaf and hard-of-hearing students, the largest number at any university in the western United States. It also advises other universities on working with their hearing-impaired students.

But the center’s reach extends off campus as well. When Borders Books & Music in Northridge came up with the idea for a children’s story hour in sign language, the CSUN center provided volunteer interpreters and storytellers. Suitable for children in first through third grades, “Sign Language Story Time” is now a twice-a-month feature. The next one will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday in the children’s amphitheater on the second floor of the bookstore at 9301 Tampa Ave.

Storytelling isn’t the CSUN center’s first venture into a child’s world. Last year Mattel executives asked for help developing Sign Language Barbie, a Barbie doll that comes with a white board and 24 reusable stickers showing how to sign words. The new Barbie--she’s a sign language teacher--was introduced in the spring as part of the toy maker’s effort to update the line with more meaningful “careers.” (Barbie is also running for president this year.)

A Barbie that teaches sign language is more than a gimmick. In a world that has finally accepted the importance of providing children with dolls in a range of hues and features, Sign Language Barbie is one more arc of the rainbow. Twenty-eight million Americans have mild to severe hearing problems. Some of them are children. Some are hearing children of deaf parents. As anyone would, they welcome the chance to glimpse themselves in the culture that surrounds them, whether it be in a bookstore on a toy shelf or on TV shows such as “The West Wing” that feature Oscar-winning actress Marlee Matlin, a hearing-impaired actress playing a--dynamic--hearing-impaired character.

And if Sign Language Story Time or Sign Language Barbie introduce hearing children to another world or, better yet, encourage them to learn sign language themselves, all the better. CSUN will have fulfilled both its community service and its teaching missions.