Managing Small Language Programs in Changing Times

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?”