Revolutions can happen in different ways. About six years ago, a very particular type of revolution began in a cluster of rooms on the main campus of Gallaudet University. There, a handful of individuals began a "quiet revolution" guided by an overarching passionate mission to conduct groundbreaking science that would have widespread benefits for education and society. Launched with a coveted award from the National Science Foundation, their Science of Learning Center--called Visual Language and Visual Learning, and affectionately referred to as VL2--became one of only six Science of Learning Centers established in the National Science Foundation's history. The purpose of VL2 is to advance the nation's knowledge of the science of learning by studying how aspects of higher cognition, language, and reading are realized through one of the most central senses, the human eye. The center advances a new perspective on human learning by using the widened vantage point of studying deaf individuals and signed language as an exciting new lens into the flexibility and structure of the human mind. Monolingual and bilingual children and adults are studied in order to promote optimal practices in education, both in and out of the classroom. VL2 has as its mission the development of rich translational outcomes as well as the promotion of two-way, mutually respectful communication among scientists and the greater community, parents, schools, and educational policymakers.