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Making Experiential Education in the Lab Accessible: Reflections of Deaf or Hard‐of‐Hearing Students and Lab Advisors

The value of an undergraduate research or internship experience can be measured by its ability to transform a student's self‐identity related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Successful experiences not only hold potential to help students shed previously held notions of self‐incompatibility with STEM, they can often motivate a research career and the desire to develop as a scientist. However, students of diverse and underrepresented populations, such as d/Deaf and hard‐of‐hearing students (DHH), engaged in undergraduate research or internship experiences in STEM may or may not reap these same benefits given the potential for barriers to information access. We conducted a survey of current and past DHH undergraduate students who worked in a lab setting as part of an undergraduate research or internship experience; as well as, graduate and undergraduate research advisors and internship advisors. All of the advisors had little to no sign language skills and had worked with at least one DHH student. Students and advisors were asked to provide strategies that they used to facilitate training and communication in lab and to rank the perceived effectiveness of those strategies. Students placed a strong emphasis on the benefits of access services (e.g., interpreting, captioning) and sign language while advisors ranked written communication highest with written protocols and face‐to‐face communication on par with access services. When asked to reflect upon these experiences, students and advisors were largely in agreement that the experiences were rewarding and productive, respectively. In contrast, DHH graduate students with prior lab research experiences indicated a readiness for graduate‐level research that graduate advisors disputed.