Project Leader
Jody H. Cripps
Dr. Jody H. Cripps is an Assistant Professor of American Sign Language in the Department of Languages at Clemson University. Dr. Cripps obtained his doctorate in the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching program from the University of Arizona. Dr. Cripps’ research interests primarily focus on universal design, signed music, signed language pathology, ASL-English literacy, and pedagogical methods. In addition to his teaching and research, he also serves as the Editor-in-Chief for the Society for American Sign Language Journal and the Vice President of The Gloss Institute, a non-profit organization providing educators and parents the necessary tools and resources to overcome the habitually low literacy (English) rates in deaf children. He can be reached at jcripps@clemson.edu.
Undergraduate Students
Clemson University's Creative Inquiry
Team
This CI is designed to conduct research and development on the signed language community outreach project that aims to serve various constituents ranging from residents to business owners on Martha’s Vineyard. Through the research and collaboration with the community partners from the island (e.g., Martha’s Vineyard’s Signs Then & Now – a collaborative volunteer project reaching out to revive a shared signed language community through: local MVTV public access MVTV - programming, town libraries, Chamber of Commerce, and MV Museum), the researchers and the partners will lead in a variety of projects. The purpose of this research is to educate community partners, business owners, and residents about signed language and help them experience the practical solutions signed language can bring to its community and everyone. The goal of this research and development is to learn more about how collaboration works and to make it a model for creating society a signed language-friendly environment.
Ashley Mccollum
Senior Researcher
Ashley is a Senior Biological Sciences Major with a minor in American Sign Language. She hopes to attend graduate school in Hearing and Communication Sciences. Ashley aspires to be an Audiologist and also become a certified interpreter. She is expected to graduate May 2024.
Aislinn Horrell
Researcher
Aislinn is a junior Biological Sciences major with a minor in American Sign Language. She hopes to attend medical school after Clemson to become a trauma physician. She plans on using her ASL minor to become a certified medical interpreter after graduation. She plans on graduating in December 2025.
Sophia LaPorta
Researcher
Sophia is a Sophomore Special Education major with a minor in American Sign Language. She hopes to participate in the Clemson Residency program and get her masters. She is expected to graduate in May 2026.
Alina Romero
Researcher
Alina is a Junior Biological Sciences Major with a minor in American Sign Language. She hopes to get into PA school after graduating from Clemson. She is also intending to use her ASL minor in order to become a certified interpreter to communicate with her future patients. She is expected to graduate May 2025.
Reagan Moore
Researcher
Reagan is a freshman Biochemistry and Psychology major with a minor in American Sign Language Studies. She plans on attending medical school after graduation to become an ENT physician. She hopes to use ASL throughout her career to aid Deaf patients and the Deaf community. She is expected to graduate in May 2027.
Community Partners
Lynn Thorp
Director and Producer
MV Sign Then & Now
In 2008, an AHA! moment occurred. Lynn and her hard of hearing husband learned the ASL manual alphabet and a few basic signs and found immediate tools to bridge communication gaps! After reading Nora Ellen Groce’s book Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language, her interest developed into the MV Signs Then & Now project, to encourage a revival of a signed language on Martha's Vineyard by utilizing town libraries and local MVTV public access and Videos-On-Demand, as a means for community outreach. A program (with the same name) airs basic ASL lessons 3X weekly; signed demos; related interviews; local signed activities; a brief legacy documentary. Free Basic ASL lessons & practice circles are facilitated at town libraries.
Joan Poole-Nash
Researcher and Archivist
Martha's Vineyard - Chilmark
Joan Cottle Poole Nash was born on Martha's Vineyard and raised in Chilmark. She learned Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL) from her great-grandmother, Emily Howland Poole. She learned American Sign Language at Camp Jabberwocky in Tisbury and at the Austine School for the Deaf in Brattleboro, Vermont. She studied Sign Language Linguistics at Boston University. She did the first data collection and study of MVSL in the late 1970's. Joan is currently retired from being an itinerant teacher of the Deaf in Newton, Massachusetts.
Michelle Vivian-Jemison
Access Coordinator & Instructor - MVTV
Michelle’s professional focus has been on digital media and engaging island residents with technical support, information and education since she moved to Martha’s Vineyard 14 years ago. For the last 10 years, she has been Instructor and Access Coordinator at MVTV where, in her engagement with people “from 8 to 80”, she has authored many classes and workshops that have created her own technical branding within the community. She has also logged hundreds of hours attending and preparing broadcasts for various Board of Selectmen’s meetings of all six towns as part of MVTV’s service to the community. Before moving to Martha’s Vineyard, Michelle’s professional career consisted of Human Resources Administration, Workers’ Compensation Caseload Administration, and overall Office Administration in various types of businesses. She was also a jazz musician and vocalist for many years.
Carolina Cooney
Executive Director
MV Chamber of Commerce
Carolina Cooney became Executive Director of the Martha's Vineyard Chamber of Commerce in April 2022. Supporting and promoting the chamber's members in the six Martha's Vineyard towns -- Aquinnah, Chilmark, Edgartown, Oak Bluffs, Tisbury/Vineyard Haven, and West Tisbury -- Ms. Cooney leads a team of professionals serving the Island’s business community by focusing on destination tourism marketing, economic development, public policy, member services, and other activities that contribute to a vibrant business climate.
Bow Van Riper
Museum Researcher
MV Museum
Dr. Bow Van Riper, research librarian extraordinaire at the Martha's Vineyard Museum, is the man to see if you want to learn anything about Martha's Vineyard's past—and much of its present. He shares his extensive knowledge with clarity, humor, and amazing insight. Van Riper spent 21 years instructing at the collegiate level while majoring in history and geology in college and earning a doctorate in history. His ancestors first settled on the Island in the 1930s, and Van Riper visited every summer from the time he was a young child until he made this place his permanent residence in 2011. He excelled at his job as the museum's library assistant in the spring of 2014, and in 2017 he was promoted to a research librarian.
Melanie McKay-Cody
Professor and Researcher
University of Arizona
Dr. Melanie McKay-Cody is a Cherokee Deaf and earned her doctoral degree in linguistic and socio-cultural anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. She has studied critically-endangered Indigenous Sign Languages in North America since 1994 and helps different tribes preserve their tribal signs. She also specialized in Indigenous Deaf studies and interpreter training incorporating Native culture, North American Indian Sign Language and ASL. She is also an educator and advocate for Indigenous interpreters and students in educational settings. Besides, North American Indian Sign Language research, she had taught ASL classes in several universities, schools and community for over 42 years. She is one of eight founders of Turtle Island Hand Talk, a new group focused on Indigenous Deaf/Hard of Hearing/DeafBlind and Hearing people.
Doreen Simons
Researcher
University of Connecticut
Doreen Simons is a native speaker of ASL and was born deaf to deaf parents, both of whom signed. She is a retired researcher and faculty of the American Sign Language program at the University of Connecticut and has worked there for more than 25 years. Also, she has a second house in Vineyard Haven, and it is rented to vacationers during the summer. Currently, she is researching the history of Martha's Vineyard and enjoying the Vineyard during the off-season
Allyson Malik
Director
Oak Bluffs Public Library
Allyson Evans Malik, MLS, first fell in love with working in libraries as an undergrad at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where she was hired to shelve books at the Law School. She eventually graduated from the University of Maryland's School of Information Studies in 2013 while working full-time at Calvert Library in Prince Frederick, Maryland. After becoming Library Director of the Oak Bluffs Public Library on Martha's Vineyard in 2016, she applied for and was granted a two-year LSTA grant of $15,000 to improve library services to those with disabilities and invited the training coordinator for Massachusetts Commission for the Deaf to provide accessibility workshops to the staff and public. Early in life, she taught herself how to fingerspell from a student dictionary when she was eight years old because her best friend's mother was deaf. Allyson and the Oak Bluffs Public Library are both proud partners of Clemson University's Martha's Vineyard Sign Language Project and look forward to working together for years to come.
Kevin McGrath
Librarian
MV Regional High School
Kevin McGrath is a high school librarian and teacher with 25 years of experience in Massachusetts public schools. He has advised a number of student-led ASL groups at Martha's Vineyard Regional High School.
Volunteers
Donna Jancsy
Registered Nurse, ASL Teacher, Interpreter-In-Training
Donna is a Registered Nurse, and a CODA (Children of Deaf Adults). She graduated in 2016 with an ASL/English interpreting degree from Framingham State University. Her objective is to envision equality between hearing and Deaf people. She volunteers her expertise with the MV Signs Then & Now project by offering Basic ASL classes, practice circles and signing children’s stories (with her “real hand’s” Fuzzy Bear hand puppet) at Vineyard town libraries. She also acts as the project’s ASL consultant.
William Alton Brant
Interpreter
Alton Brant (AB) is a retired Emeritus Professor of American Sign Language (ASL) at Clemson University. A CODA trained as an educator, Dr. Brant completed his Ed.D. in Special Education Administration in 1986 (University of South Carolina). He has served as a teacher, administrator, and advisor to numerous institutions and agencies serving the Deaf. He has been a guest lecturer to the Czech Republic, Palestine (Gaza) and Russia. His work experience includes interpreting, teaching, administering a program for deaf children with behavioral/emotional problems, and serving as the Director of the SC School for the Deaf. He has consulted with the SC Department of Mental Health and the SC Department of Education. He has served on several boards related to the education of deaf children and the Deaf Community at-large. He is currently a member of Crosspoint Church in Clemson, Director for TriState Deaf School of Theology, consultant for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and serves as Liaison for the SC Baptist Conference for the Deaf. He has been a RID certified interpreter of the Deaf since 1975. His bride of 47 years is Ginny Dent Brant. They have 3 sons and 4 precious grandchildren.
Stacy Duvall
Medical Advocate
After working with both deaf and hearing children in various settings, Stacy obtained degrees in pharmacy technology and pre-pharmacy from Pima Community College and the University of Arizona, becoming a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society in the process. It was then as a pharmacy technician that Stacy was made acutely aware of the healthcare inequality issue that her community faces. She has since then donated an untold number of hours to addressing this need, receiving numerous job offers in the process. In her free time, Stacy enjoys reading, travel adventures with her husband and spending time with her dogs, one of whom is also deaf.
Callie Marsh
Interpreter
Callie Marsh, CI, CT began learning ASL at Maryville College in Tennessee but ultimately was brought up by the gracious Columbia, SC Deaf community. She is forever indebted to her wonderful Deaf and interpreter mentors there. Callie has provided service as a community interpreter in private practice, staff interpreter, video relay, and video remote interpreter primarily in the Carolinas since 2004. She currently resides in Greenville with her spouse and child.
Adrienne DeCramer
Interpreter
Adrienne DeCramer is an ASL interpreter based in North Carolina. She graduated from Gallaudet University with an MA in Linguistics and studied ASL-English interpreting in North Florida. She has nurtured an interest in sign language since a young age and began formal studies of ASL after high school. She enjoys learning about people and cultures, communing with nature, and writing poetry. Her favorite part of studying ASL is the linguistic variation and diversity found among its users. Her hope is to continue being part of the North American signing community, learning and growing, life-long.
Melissa Harris
Interpreter
Melissa Harris is an ASL interpreter based in North Carolina. She comes from Hartford, Connecticut (Home of the first American School for the Deaf). Melissa graduated from the Interpreter Training program at Central Piedmont Community College in 1999 and began her career as a community interpreter. Once achieving her RID National Interpreter Certification, she went on to study communication at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte earning her BS. While still working as a community interpreter, Melissa decided to try video relay. She loves the variety of interpreting situations which makes each day a new adventure and opportunity for learning from Deaf individuals all over the country. When she isn’t interpreting, she is meditating, writing, or crafting. Melissa resides in Charlotte with her two fur babies Biscuit and Waffles.
Business Partners
Susan Sanford
President and CEO
Vineyard Complementary Medicine
Susan has a passion for solving problems and assisting her clients on the path to pain relief and healing. Susan’s passion is combining her skill set and background of physical therapy with Chinese Medicine theory and complementary medicine treatment techniques. Susan feels that her specialized skill set is invaluable for helping to resolve and manage difficult cases of sciatica, low back pain and arthritis and musculoskeletal injuries. Susan believes collaboration with other specialists is the key to success with any injury healing especially with low back pain, chronic pain, and injuries.
Director
MV Playhouse
MJ Bruder Munafo
MJ Bruder Munafo has served as the Artistic & Executive Director of Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse since 1995, but she’s been working at the theater since 1986. She is responsible for the management of the Playhouse and the production of well over 250 plays during her tenure. In June of 1997, she graduated cum laude from Harvard University’s Extension School, earning her ALB with a Concentration in Drama. Her work as a stage director spans over twenty-five years and over fifty plays; including, most recent, Our Town. MJ is committed to developing new plays and educating children and adults in theater arts. She is a member of SDC and a recipient of the 2005 Creative Living Award from the Permanent Endowment Fund of Martha’s Vineyard. She and her husband Paul live in Vineyard Haven.
Richard Paradise
Director
MV Film Society
In February 2002, Richard Paradise established the Martha's Vineyard Film Society, Inc. The Martha's Vineyard Film Society, Inc. is a member-supported, non-profit arts organization that screens the year's greatest independent films, cinematic classics, documentaries, and foreign films for a variety of audiences.
