Miriam College’s partnership with the Southeast Asian Institute for the Deaf (SAID) will enter a new level as SAID transfers its leadership and operation to Miriam College starting June. Miriam College leased a part of its compound to SAID in 1982. Then an independent educational institution, SAID was offering academic programs for the deaf from pre–school to high school using the Total Communication philosophy and believing that language deprivation is a great challenge to a deaf child. "This is a multi level approach to the education of deaf children," explains SAID principal Carolyn Ui.

 "It implies the right of the child to all forms of communication available so that she or he may develop goals of language competence and scholastic success. Total communication includes all modes of language: child devised gestures, the formal language of signs, speech, speechreading (reading lips), fingerspelling, amplication of residual hearing (hearding aids), reading and writing."  

In 1987, SAID high school graduates were first mainstreamed into the Miriam College higher learning program via the groundbreaking B.A. Computer Technology course which was designed specially for hearing impaired students. Graduates of this course have been successfully employed as programmers, graphic artists, and teachers.

Today, SAID graduates can also enroll in other four year programs of Miriam College, such as Psychology, Child Development and Education, and Business Administration, and take their alongside hearing students. Their course options may yet expand as the new MC SAID partnership develops.

"The intergration of SAID was a natural progression," says Dr. Patricia B. Licuanan, Miriam College president. "They have been part of our community for the past 25 years. Most of their high school students go to our College. Because of SAID, our students at all level have become more accepting of and more comfortable with hearing impaired students. There are even clubs in the lower units that aim to teach hearing students sig language. So, this integration is truly the next step, both for SAID’s program development and the explansion of Miriam College’s Special Education programs and our objective to provide quality education for all."