Shortly after this manual conversation, a man in his early 30s wearing a maroon necktie, khaki pants and an earring, strides into the room armed with a stack of papers and a smile.

He hops onto a chair so the entire class can see his hand gestures. As soon as he stomps his feet, heads emerge from books. The full attention of the class is focused on him.

Elementary Sign Language II, taught entirely in American Sign Language by instructor Steve Vickery, is ready to begin. But Vickery, who is legally deaf, uses different teaching methods because no verbal communication is used. Students are only allowed to sign. In fact, Vickery won't even respond to a spoken question.

"Sometimes I have to think about how it is they are seeing the language and then go back and think about how I can teach, explain or model a word differently so they can understand the concept I'm teaching," he says.

Alisha Drake, a junior math education major, wasn't surprised about the format of the class.

"My teacher in Sign Language I was deaf too, so I kind of expected it," she says.

More students are learning this complex language once used primarily by the deaf community - about 28 million people, a relatively small segment of the U.S. population. The reasons for the increase may lie both in the university's decision last fall to consider ASL a foreign language and the growing number of students pursuing degrees in deaf-related fields.

Rick Newton, chair of the modern and classical languages department, says the university's decision to implement ASL as a foreign language complied with Ohio laws to recognize ASL as a foreign language.

"Offering ASL as a foreign language is an activity that supports our mission to academic diversity," he says. "Since the College of Arts and Sciences oversees the foreign language requirements for students, we were able to adopt ASL as a foreign language."

Pamela Luft, associate professor of deaf education, says she also believes learning ASL can be beneficial to students going into social service fields where they might interact with the hearing impaired.

"It's important for them to develop a grasp of the language so they will have some communication skills and a background and an understanding of deaf people in the deaf community," she says.

Jonathon Trent, a freshman recreation management major, plans to use his ASL skills to enhance his career in recreational activities.

"I'm sure I'll end up running into deaf people at some point with my job," he says. "It also gives a sense of self-esteem knowing I have the ability to communicate with deaf people."