Master of Education of the Deaf
The Master of Education of the Deaf (MDE) is accredited by the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). This one to two-year program emphasizes the training needed to develop communication skills in deaf and hard-of-hearing children. The DHSS is home to a unique, interdisciplinary approach to teacher training by combining training in audiology, speech-language pathology, and deaf education.
We encourage all interested students to apply for our graduate program. Students entering the Master of Education of the Deaf program are required to have an undergraduate degree in deaf education, special education, early childhood education, or general education and must have teacher certification. The program will be one year in length (three semesters: Fall, Spring, and Summer including Maymester) for those entering with teacher certification in deaf education and two years (five semesters: Fall, Spring, and Summer including Maymester in year 1, Fall and Spring in year 2) for those entering with teacher certification in an area other than deaf education. The two-year program leads to an endorsement in Special Education PreK-12 Hearing.
The Vanderbilt Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences is committed to recruiting, admitting, and training a diverse student body of future audiologists, speech-language pathologists, educators of the deaf, and researchers. Accordingly, we are continually working to establish and maintain equity and inclusivity in all areas of our educational mission. Our commitment to embrace and promote diversity, equity, and inclusivity is broad with respect to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, nationality, disability, and differences, among others. This commitment is founded on our core belief in equality for all humans. Our goal is that our culture and the diversity of our department will reflect the diversity of the nation and the populations that we serve. Furthermore, we strongly believe that our focus to embrace diversity is a critical element in education that will prepare our future audiologists, speech-language pathologists, educators, and researchers to serve the populations with whom we work in all settings.
