Two deaf interns at Dow offering new perspective

When Melody Frink was a child, she thought the whole world was deaf and everybody knew sign language. One of 11 children in an all-deaf family, she signed to people in stores, on the streets, everywhere, until she learned that she actually lived in a hearing world. Now a college student, she is interning at Dow Chemical Co., in Spring House, working alongside hearing people. Yet, bridging the hearing and deaf worlds has not been a problem this summer.

Frink wears large chemistry goggles that fail to hide how animated her face is when she signs. Every facial muscle moves as she mouths each word and she signs so quickly her hands are a pink blur. On this day, sign language interpreter Adam Buck translated for her.

"I was just shocked upon my arrival how people even knew some sign language before I even got here," Frink signed. "Normally, the tendency is after a deaf person arrives people will then try to communicate and learn sign language."

Her lab manager, Janine Marie Vanluvanee, has never worked with a deaf person, but said she found the transition "pretty seamless." When Frink first arrived, a sign-language interpreter translated the fundamental lab procedures for testing resin samples sent in by Dow customers.

"Once she understood the procedures and the testing, she was just able to run with it," Vanluvanee said.

The lab has been without an interpreter for weeks now, but communication is still going strong. Before each test, Frink and Vanluvanee exchange e-mail detailing the reason for the test, specific problems concerning the customer, and the test procedure. Then, they will discuss it to clarify any questions.

"Melody can speak in a way that I can understand, and then we can fill in the blanks with either finger spelling or some signs that I have come to learn," said Vanluvanee. If Frink still does not understand, they will try again, finger spell out words using sign language, or write.

In sign language, hand motions convey words, but there is also a signal for each letter of the alphabet, to allow for finger spelling.

Frink is one of two deaf interns at Dow this summer.

At a nearby lab, Mary Sporman and her coworkers communicate almost entirely by hands.

"I learned the [signs for] ABCs before Mary got here, so that I could be ready to learn from her," said Matt Crowe, a senior analytical chemist who works with Sporman. "She's very patient, and it's helped me to learn."

When he speaks, his sentences are interspersed with "um" and "eh" as he slowly turns the words from his mouth into signs. Sometimes he forgets a sign, so he finger spells the word to Sporman who teaches him. His hands are not a blur, but he gets his message across.

"Mary's working on one of our detectors that we, we, uh, don't use A-L-O-T, a lot, so, um, she's trying to make it, um, work for, for what what we do here. Um, because it's, it's . . .," Crowe signed and said. Then he paused.

". . . underutilized," Crowe said, dropping his attempt at signing. "I'm not going to sign 'underutilized.' "

Through another interpreter, Anna Maria Tamaro, Sporman replied: "You are wonderful for two months of studying."

Despite being a beginner at American Sign Language, Crowe can successfully teach Sporman about new experiments. And she understands. She nods and signs back replies and questions. There is genuine exchange of dialogue.

Sporman's supervisor, research scientist Scott Willis, learned ASL in graduate school when two of his friends were deaf, but that was 15 years ago. Signing with Sporman has helped him recall his past knowledge of ASL.

"I remembered more [ASL] than I thought maybe I would remember," Willis said.

Frink and Sporman have introduced deaf culture to their coworkers. It is impolite to call a deaf person hearing-impaired. The correct term is deaf or hard-of-hearing. When Frink and Sporman are signing in the hallway, they prefer a passerby to literally walk through their conversation. There is no need to make a fuss and ask for permission. To get a deaf person's attention, you tap her or him on the shoulder.

Frink is scheduled to graduate with a degree in biochemistry in the spring from the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID), one of the colleges at Rochester Institute of Technology. Sporman is in her third year of studying lab science technology at NTID. About 1,300 deaf students enroll in NTID each year, and most degrees require an internship like this one.

Dow recruited from NTID's campus for the first time last October. For one of the recruiters, Martin Deetz, it was the first time that he encountered so many deaf people. He was shocked when he attended a symposium featuring six deaf NTID student panelists discussing previous internships.

"The [hearing] moderator would speak, and an interpreter would talk to the deaf student [panelists]," Deetz said. "The deaf students would sign to the audience. There was also a person talking into a microphone interpreting that so everybody in the audience could hear, and there was another person mouthing the words out for some people who could read lips. So what you saw was a tremendous amount of communication happening all at the same time."

Deetz eventually hired Sporman and Frink.

Dow's relationship with NTID started because Katie Hunt, director of innovations sourcing and sustainable technologies at Dow, also sits on the advisory board at NTID. In her experience, some deaf people process visual information quicker than hearing people and are just as competent.

"They did things in a different way," Hunt said, "and came to the same conclusion."

Two deaf interns and their hearing coworkers at Dow Chemical Co. discuss communicating on the job at www.philly.com/deafEndText