Jason Nordhaus, PhD, associate professor of physics at the Rochester Institute of Technology National Technical Institute for the Deaf (RIT/ NTID), isn’t on social media.

As an active research astrophysicist and dedicated educator focused on studying neutron stars and developing curriculum materials, he has little time to create online content. However, his participation in a video this spring using American Sign Language (ASL) to promote a solar eclipse viewing event on campus went viral, much to his surprise.

What sets Nordhaus apart isn’t just his brief social media fame. As a hearing individual, he was inspired by a lengthy ASL conversation he witnessed at an airport during his postdoctoral work at Princeton, and decided to learn to sign in order to teach physics and astronomy to deaf and hard-of-hearing college students.

“I watched an extended conversation between these two people and asked myself, do I know any deaf or hard of hearing physicists or astronomers? And the answer was a solid no. I did some research, and the number of deaf or hard-of-hearing researchers was shockingly low,” Nordhaus says. “The language barriers are huge. So, I decided to take classes at the Katzenbach School for the Deaf and learn ASL.”

He later began teaching at RIT/ NTID — the only college in the country with a significant enrollment of deaf and hard-of-hearing students in advanced science degree programs.— as the sole provider of college-level astronomy in ASL. His courses, capped at 12 to allow a full line of sight for each student in the room, are highly popular and consistently have a waitlist.

Nordhaus points out a challenge in offering more access to physics courses: most professional interpreters come from liberal arts backgrounds and often lack science degrees, which can lead to a disconnect between the instructor’s words and the interpreter’s understanding.

“As an example,” Nordhaus explains, “I had a student attend a presentation on this classical physics problem known as ‘the three-body problem,’ which involves three celestial bodies orbiting each other. I watched the interpreter sign it as ‘three people having issues with each other.’ They tried, but it’s not even close to accurate, which illustrates the significant language barrier in the classroom.”

To support interpreters, Nordhaus developed a series of short videos breaking down concepts from a typical Physics I: Mechanics course, funded by a generous grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. This valuable training helps interpreters provide more accurate information, which expands course accessibility for this underserved population.

Nordhaus has also invested in projects supporting research goals of deaf and hard-of-hearing physics majors, including a recent three-year partnership with Boston University and involving faculty from the University of Toronto. Funded by a National Science Foundation grant, the project surveyed galactic clusters to understand binary star evolution, offering unique research opportunities for deaf and hard-ofhearing students during summer sessions at Boston University. This notable experience involved sending a student who was both deaf and blind to Boston University with her tactile interpreters, resulting in a successful summer program.

“It’s easy for me to work with deaf and hard-of-hearing students,” Nordhaus says. “I have supervised about 15 or 16 undergraduates on summer projects. But we face significant challenges in finding faculty at other universities who can communicate effectively and dedicate the necessary time to work with them.”

Nordhaus continues to expand opportunities for deaf and hard-ofhearing students to study advanced physics through a new National Science Foundation grant-funded project this year, creating a partnership with fellow RIT faculty Manuela Campanelli and Carlos Lousto and collaborators at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) and Johns Hopkins University. This initiative will facilitate summer research exchanges for five promising undergraduate students from both RIT/ NTID and UMB, a Minority-Serving Institution, beginning in 2025.●