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Managing Small Language Programs in Changing Times
Greenberg, Marc L. Reitan, Carol Kang, Sahie Abdalla, Mahmoud Ka, Omar Abrams, Zsuzsanna Ryan, Colleenn
Greenberg, Marc L.
Reitan, Carol
Kang, Sahie
Abdalla, Mahmoud
Ka, Omar
Abrams, Zsuzsanna
Ryan, Colleenn
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Abstract
The discussion excerpts part of a plenary discussion, Small Programs in Varied Contexts: A Roundtable, that took place during the 2016 ADFL Summer Seminar West on 3 June at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. The discussion sought perspectives from leaders of programs from a variety of institutions, public and private, including a community college, liberal arts colleges, and research universities distributed throughout the United States. The panelists included Carol Reitan, a French specialist and former chair of the Department of World Languages and Cultures at the City College of San Francisco; Sahie Kang, professor of Korean and director of the School of Korean at Middlebury College; Mahmoud Abdalla, professor of Arabic and director of the Arabic Language School at Middlebury College; Omar Ka, a specialist in French, Wolof, and African linguistics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and a member of the ADFL Executive Committee; Zsuzsanna Abrams, a specialist in German and applied linguistics and former department chair at the University of California, Santa Cruz; and Colleen Ryan, professor of Italian at Indiana University, Bloomington. The context of the discussion is what might have been referred to in
another period as a crisis in higher education but what instead has become the new normal: shrinking budgets; pressure to raise efficiency and provide accountability metrics; competition for students anxious about rising tuition, debt, and postgraduate
employment; and increased competition to gain student-credit- hour production and majors to generate tuition revenue. All this presents itself on the background of the dissonance between the growing real-world need for language and intercultural competence, on the one hand, and student ambivalence to foreign language study, on the other. The discussion below proceeds from the questions I posed to the panel: “What has worked for you in your program? What creative strategies might you recommend to other chairs or faculty members managing small programs?”
Description
Note: Editor Dennis Looney provided permission via email 13 Nov 2018 to deposit the published version in the KU ScholarWorks digital repository. Correspondence on file with corresponding author Marc L. Greenberg.
Date
2018
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ADFL
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Keywords
foreign language education, higher education, less-commonly-taught languages, language program management, critical languages
Citation
Greenberg, Marc L., Carol Reitan, Sahie Kang, Mahmoud Abdalla, Omar Ka, Zsuzsanna Abrams, Colleen Ryan. "Managing Small Language Programs in Changing Times." ADFL Bulletin ◆ Vol. 44, No. 2, 2018: 30-40.