Thu. Mar 28th, 2024
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The council of academic affairs approved three new additions to the course offerings at Eastern on Thursday.

American sign language will now be offered as a foreign language class beginning in the Spring 2022 semester as ASL I. ASL II will be offered beginning in Fall 2022.

Marita Gronnvoll, council member and assistant chair of the communications department, said that she took ASL classes when she attended college and that she was curious how similar this course would be to those.

“One of the things that we were required to do was have certain number of hours per week embedded in deaf culture,” Rosenstein said. “I see deaf culture everywhere in here is you’re going to see that kind of embedded experience.”

Gronvoll said that while Charleston does not have the same kind of “embedded culture,” the ASL Club on campus or certain online experiences could be another option.

ASL is a required class in the communications disorders and sciences major and is a popular elective in majors like special education. Now, students will be able to take this class at Eastern, rather than having to transfer credits in from a different institution.

The council voted unanimously in favor of adding the course.

They also approved the addition of a public health course on medical cannabis which will explore the effects of medical cannabis on various conditions and effective ways to administer medical cannabis.

Julie Dietz, the chair of the public health department, spoke about this course to provide context and more explanation about cannabis itself.

“Among dispensaries, there is a vast, you know breadth of knowledge that is in some areas very limited and in other areas very great,” Dietz said.

Dietz said that the purpose of this course would be to fill in gaps in knowledge and make sure that medical professionals would fully understand what they’re prescribing to patients.

A lot of common knowledge about cannabis, including things like strains and their purposes, would need to be expanded upon and explained scientifically to be beneficial in the medical field.

Dietz said that terpenes are more important from that perspective as different compounds can help with anxiety relief, pain relief or recovery from narcotic addiction.

The class would also deal with the ethics and legality of medicating with cannabis as only some states in the U.S. have legalized the drug.

“The goal of this class, in the very end, is that each student can create a toolkit that can be used at a dispensary and to help to …….

Source: https://www.dailyeasternnews.com/2021/09/30/caa-approves-american-sign-language-courses/