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PLUS ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same? Not quite. After twenty-five years of teaching and a decade of chairing, I would prefer to say that events, concerns, and even personalities repeat themselves over time in surprisingly similar ways but with often significant variations. I have just completed ten years as chair, eight at the State University College of New York, Plattsburgh, and now two at East Carolina University. These institutions themselves are quite different and yet nonetheless rather similar.1 I would like to focus on five interrelated issues that I have had to deal with at both institutions: threats to the department, technology, resources, personnel, and constituency relations. I also suggest some ways in which chairs can respond to each.
Threats to the Department
When I made my first presentation at an ADFL summer seminar in 1992, I had just completed a year of struggle. Without consulting the affected faculty, the Plattsburgh administration had planned to reconfigure the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature into a center for the study of languages and cultures under the control of the area studies programs.
The reasons for this plan were both budgetary and ideological. It was an attack on tenure because it would in effect have abolished the foreign language department and made it possible for administrators to retrench tenured faculty members. It was a cost-cutting measure. Instead of filling vacant positions with tenure-track faculty members, the administration would have outsourced language teaching. Skills courses would have been taught by language teachers from French- and Spanish-speaking foreign countries brought to the campus through exchange or partnership agreements with Latin American and Canadian institutions. The plan was also an attack on the teaching of literature. The directors of the area studies programs felt that the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature focused too much on literary texts and cared insufficiently about skills development or culture studies.
The administration eventually backed off. We argued for the study of foreign languages and literature in articles that appeared in campus and national publications. The curriculum was significantly revised to integrate language, literature, and culture. We established a network of contacts in area high schools, with the School of Business, and with chairs at other institutions through national organizations such as ADFL. And we obtained supplementary funds through a major federal grant with an interdisciplinary focus.
When I moved to East Carolina University, I did not expect to be faced once again with such threats. I had not been on campus for more than a month when the general administration of the North Carolina university system announced a statewide review of all foreign language programs. The problem was low productivity, defined as nineteen or fewer degrees awarded in the past two years unless the number of junior and senior majors in the most recent year exceeded twenty-five or the number of degrees awarded in the most recent year exceeded ten. Only a handful of the foreign language programs in the North Carolina system had sufficient productivity to meet this standard; none of ECU's did, although Spanish was close. This program review shocked the College of Arts and Sciences, which had been told the year before that all majors in the liberal arts core would be exempted from the productivity requirement. Evidently, foreign languages were not to be considered an essential part of a liberal arts education.
The major problems here are efficiency, productivity, and accountability, key words in the corporate view of the university now rather widespread. According to the general administration, which is accountable to the state legislature, foreign language programs that produce small numbers of majors or offer advanced classes for a few students are not cost-effective. Consequently, it is looking for major programs to eliminate or consolidate. This is, I believe, a propitiatory offering of programs that the general administration considers expendable--propitiatory in the sense that sacrificing foreign languages may save other liberal arts programs.2
What can chairs do to meet challenges such as these? In the short run, they need to be realistic and recognize that some majors may be discontinued, at least temporarily. ECU may eventually lose its German major. Our fear is that French would not be far behind. If we were to lose these majors we would try to maintain minor programs in these languages as well as to ensure that other at-risk languages, such as Russian, continue to be taught in service programs. We will also try to capture more enrollment by developing programs in other languages for which students have shown interest. At ECU these languages are Japanese, Italian, and, curiously, Latin and ancient Greek. You may meet with opposition from your faculty. Teachers in Spanish may not want resources diverted to other languages when their classes are overflowing; those in French or German may feel that you are siphoning.
You may want to review your curricula. By improving the integration of language, literature, and culture you may be able to safeguard the study of literature while satisfying students' preprofessional preferences (Henning, "Integration"). Smoothing the transition from lower-division to upper-division courses and adding more skills courses may also help. Consider linking grammar review, composition, and conversation courses to provide students with more integrated practice. Strike a balance between courses that focus on Europe and courses that focus on other parts of the world, if appropriate. Provide opportunities for students to use their foreign language skills, for example through internships and international work-study experiences (Freeland).
On the assumption that some majors will be lost despite efforts to revise curricula, I would immediately begin rebuilding these programs but in more interdisciplinary forms. We have not adequately encouraged students to pursue double majors, for example, by adding a foreign language major to a preprofessional program. If there are obstacles to obtaining a double major, find out if there are ways around them. The UNC system, for example, imposes a tuition surcharge if students exceed 140 undergraduate credits, but there is a little-known exemption for double majors. Interdisciplinary majors are an option that was recently approved at ECU. Germanic studies, French or francophone studies, Caribbean studies, Asian studies, Russian and Central European studies: these are all possibilities that may be more palatable to students, particularly in combination with a more "practical" major. The templates that I have designed for these majors include at least a minor in an appropriate foreign language and encourage students to include at least some literature courses. Partnerships with professional programs should also be considered. We participate, for example, in an accelerated MBA program that builds on an undergraduate foreign language major. We are also discussing the possibility of a 4 + 1 program, Spanish for Paralegals, with a local community college.
In the long run, however, I think that our survival will depend on building and securing support from the community. I return to this proposal later in the context of constituency relations.
Technology
For years technology has been seen by many administrators enamored of the corporate model as the answer to the problems of efficiency and accountability (Bérubé; Young). Technology is supposed to reach more students, usually with fewer teachers. Many foreign language teachers, however, see technology as a way for students to have more opportunities to practice the target language or access authentic cultural materials. While I was at Plattsburgh the problems were competition for limited technology resources, rapid obsolescence, and, most important, difficulty in getting students and faculty members to use the technology that was available. After more than a decade of arguing that we needed a language lab to help students develop stronger language skills, we finally received the funds through a special legislative initiative for a relatively small audio lab. We hoped that additional money for computers would follow. The few computers that we were initially able to acquire were old before they were unpacked. Moreover, neither the language lab computers nor the offices of departmental faculty members were connected to the fiber-optic system by the time that I left. Internet access was very limited, making computer-assisted practice, e-mail pen pals, chat rooms, or World Wide Web activities difficult. Senior faculty members were reluctant to learn to use the new technology and to incorporate it into their classes. They expected that a language lab director or technology specialist would take care of it for them. I recently learned that the language lab has been dismantled because foreign language faculty members were not using it sufficiently.
ECU, unlike the Plattsburgh I knew, is a very "wired" university. Besides a traditional audio language lab, we have a departmental computer lab with e-mail and Internet access. All faculty members have the latest hardware and software. Nevertheless, the problems that I encountered at Plattsburgh occur at ECU and are even exacerbated by the drive to stay with, if not ahead of, the curve: competition for the extensive technology resources, rapidly changing software and hardware, and most important, difficulty in getting students and faculty members to use the technology.
Since shortly after I arrived at ECU, the push has been for interactive TV and Internet-based courses as part of a system-wide distance education initiative. Additional resources and the accompanying prestige flow to programs that are able and willing to develop appropriate online courses and even degree programs.
The purpose is still to increase enrollment while keeping the number of faculty members down. Currently the emphasis is on providing access for nontraditional students. We are also beginning to hear that the difference between on-campus and off-campus students will soon disappear. On-campus students will be able to take distance education courses from their dorm rooms or apartments. This change will make it easier to consolidate low-productivity programs through consortial arrangements or alliances with other institutions--yet another corporate solution (Mahoney; Basinger). Several campuses would share faculty members and courses and thereby be able to provide fuller major programs to more students. The idea is to be more cost-effective without reducing the quality of programs; indeed, the belief is that program quality will increase if more courses are made available to majors. Such alliances are the technological variant of the idea batted around in many states, including New York, that certain campuses might be designated as centers for the study of particular languages or disciplines (Garcia).
There are, however, serious problems with Internet-based or interactive TV courses, particularly in foreign languages. Are they really cost-effective? Besides the high cost of equipment, there are the costs of production and transmission. Faculty members are demanding--and getting--released time both to prepare the courses and to teach them because of the huge number of hours required. Moreover, the equipment costs may be prohibitive, particularly if audio or video is added to increase the appropriateness for foreign language teaching. In addition, experience has shown that distance education courses are most useful for highly motivated students in professional programs. Even then the dropout rate can be as high as fifty percent (Pitfield). Does technology really provide a cost-effective way of teaching foreign languages to larger numbers of students, when we already find it difficult to convince undergraduates to put the necessary time into developing their linguistic skills? Indeed, can all the foreign language skills really be developed with technological means? The Internet may be useful for reading comprehension and writing. Improved technology may increase the possibility of some listening comprehension work. But what about speaking?
What can chairs do to deal with this situation? First of all, understand the politics of technology resource allocation on your campus. I would encourage you to participate in the technology videoconferences and technology workshops, join the technology task forces and committees, and be aware of the policies and even help determine them if you can.
Consider positively but critically the possibilities for using technology to enhance your foreign language programs. Remember that there are various ways of incorporating instructional technology into courses, from simply putting the syllabi on course Web pages to complete Internet-based courses. PowerPoint presentations, electronically submitted class activities, Internet materials to supplement regular periodic class meetings: these intermediate steps are readily accessible to faculty members. Arrange for departmental technology workshops or encourage faculty members to participate in campus-wide workshops if they are available. Designate a departmental technology mentor.
Then establish pilot projects with a few faculty members whom you can reward in some way. You will then be able to speak with experience about both the positive and the negative aspects of technology. The projects that I have encouraged have given me leverage with my campus administration. Spanish for Reading, a graduate course taught on the Internet; online course materials, including an electronic textbook for intermediate French; PowerPoint presentations for the course Spanish Review of Grammar.
Investigate the possibility of establishing the type of consortial arrangements that are being promoted in North Carolina. You might make consortial arrangements with other four-year institutions in your region or with community colleges or by offering AP classes for local high schools. I remain skeptical about the capacity of these arrangements to provide genuine options for foreign language programs, but they might, in some forms and for some student populations. I think that it is better to speak from experience about the problems that you have encountered than from theoretical speculation. It keeps administrators from dismissing you as a Luddite.
Revenue Generation
Another measure of productivity has emerged: the capacity to obtain supplementary funding or to generate revenue, which is as close to making a profit as a not-for-profit organization can come. Supplementary funding usually takes the form of grants, but it can include revenue derived from other sources such as alumni contributions and noncredit courses. This new emphasis on outside funding is particularly disturbing for the liberal arts, where the possibilities for obtaining grants are limited. Grants for literary research are very hard to obtain and are almost always individual. They do not usually offer institutions more than faculty salary, when what really interests those institutions is indirect cost recovery. Liberal arts programs also have limited markets for noncredit courses, and their alumni cannot be expected to hold high-paying jobs.
At Plattsburgh there were never enough funds for supplementary instructional materials, travel, or faculty development because of the budgetary problems of the SUNY system and New York State. It was only when I directed a grant project funded by the United States Department of Education that I began to learn how important supplementary funding could be to the maintenance and prestige of a department. Grants can provide many of the things for which faculty members clamor but for which there is seldom money in the departmental operating budget. Even small grants can be useful, especially if they become stepping-stones to larger ones.
At ECU the department budget is much larger, and the chair has more control of how the money is spent. Nevertheless, acquiring supplementary funds is becoming more important. The number of grants submitted and obtained is carefully monitored. It is obvious that to be considered productive, we should be seeking and bringing in more dollars. We are also encouraged to participate in the College of Arts and Sciences telethon and even to do our own fund-raising with alumni. Changes in administrative policy have made it possible for departments to set up income-generating noncredit courses and programs as well.
I certainly never expected to have to become a fund-raiser when I became chair, but that task is also part of the corporate view of the university. What started as a change in the role of the college president has now trickled down to the departmental level. In this climate, how can chairs improve the situation of their departments? Encourage the writing of grants, particularly those that are interdisciplinary or community-based. Conduct fund-raising campaigns and look for community sponsors. Set up noncredit foreign language courses for professional development with summer school, weekend, or Internet classes. These projects may be more feasible uses of technology than are the program consolidation consortia that I discussed earlier.
Personnel Issues
The recurring personnel issues that I would like to discuss are related to the two concerns with which I began: first, cost-effectiveness, accountability, and productivity and, second, technology. Reducing the number of tenure-track faculty members and replacing them with part-time or fixed-term faculty members are increasingly seen by administrators as ways of maintaining flexibility--that is, as a means of responding to shifts in student enrollment. At Plattsburgh, the ever-present danger was that the number of part-time positions would be increased. Indeed, the extensive use of part-timer staffing is a real problem on many campuses without graduate programs where, on average, thirty to forty percent of courses are taught by adjuncts, including almost all lower-division classes. At ECU, we have to watch that the number of fixed-term and non-tenure-track positions does not continue to rise. It is well over the ten percent recommended level. Most of our fixed-term faculty members are in Spanish. (Of the two who are not, one is on phased retirement and the other is retired from another institution.) Unlike part-timers, however, they receive decent salaries and benefits, and they are eligible for raises.
My main concern is that the department recover the tenure-track lines of retiring faculty members, although this may not be possible in languages other than Spanish. In these cases I will try to maintain the presence of the language though perhaps in combination with another: for example, German and Russian or Italian and Latin. We have to be realistic about the shifts in student enrollment and not try to maintain faculty lines in languages with decreasing numbers of majors when those lines are vacated by retirement or resignation. It is more important to ensure that certain languages continue to be taught, preferably by tenure-track faculty members, than that their majors be maintained in their present form. We have had to develop the interdisciplinary potential of faculty members as well as their interest in teaching courses in literature in translation. We also have faculty members with credentials to teach more than one foreign language, which makes it possible to shift them when additional courses are needed. It is a shame to use a native speaker of French or German, for example, to teach Spanish, but such a move may safeguard the position of another faculty member.
I consider two other points together: tenure or promotion and the relation of scholarship in literature to teaching and service. I have seen an increasing disjunction between the official missions of institutions, the needs of foreign language programs, and the research interests of the faculty. The problem is driven in part by institutional attempts to find market niches to maintain or boost enrollment, and it appears to be national in scope. "Until these sets of priorities come into greater agreement," writes Richard Lambert, "the life of the language departments on our campuses will continue to be uneasy" (57).
Plattsburgh was moving toward a more preprofessional and regional service orientation that emphasized teaching and service over scholarship and research leading to publication. Literary scholarship was seen as largely irrelevant. So was the teaching of one's research specialty (called one's "pet courses" by administrators in the corporate mold; see, e.g., Curtis). It was in this context that I argued for a conception of the teacher-scholar that encouraged the publication of articles about teaching innovations or service projects to supplement research on literary criticism (Henning, "Teacher-Scholar").
At ECU the picture is more complex. Here the tension is increasing because of several factors: the self-image within a new Doctoral II institution of the College of Arts and Sciences that focuses on traditional research and scholarship; the growth of graduate programs in the professional schools; and the survival needs of the liberal arts programs, especially foreign languages.
To obtain tenure and promotion, faculty members must publish discipline-based articles. In foreign languages and literature, this means articles on literary topics, unless one's field is linguistics or pedagogy. (In terms of productivity, however, it is not clear that the campus administration draws any such distinction; indeed, some of the productivity guidelines seem not to distinguish among types of publications at all.) At the same time, there is great pressure to incorporate technology into courses, to design online courses, to participate in interdisciplinary programs, and so on. There is also a great need for faculty members to assist in outreach and articulation projects. All these activities take a great deal of time that would otherwise be devoted to research. Moreover, students clamor for more skill-based and preprofessional courses, as well as supervised internships. Many are unhappy with the literature orientation of the faculty. This is one of the most frequent criticisms I hear during senior exit interviews.
One possible solution would be to have tenured faculty members, those who are already full professors and those who have no interest in promotion, focus on technology and engage in outreach activities. This idea sounds reasonable in theory, but in practice it is hard to accomplish. Why should they? It is even hard to get some faculty members to incorporate technology into their courses even if they do not have to develop any materials themselves. Some do not want to change. Others are reluctant to work with community groups. Some refuse to expend the effort; others feel it is demeaning.
What can the chair do to improve the situation? Try to capitalize on the new interests of faculty members when you become aware of them. Use self-interest as the lever. One of my faculty members in phased retirement who has recently discovered computers serves as the departmental technology mentor. Another Spanish faculty member nearing the end of his career has developed a sideline consulting business to sustain him in retirement. He now teaches courses in Spanish for the medical professions and will, I hope, expand into Spanish for paralegals. (He recently published his very first article, on the problems of Hispanics in the judicial system.) One of our most productive literary scholars is also interested in translation (and in not teaching lower-division language courses). He is working on an advanced undergraduate-graduate certificate program in translation. If you can, compensate special projects with reassigned time, preferential scheduling, funds for faculty development, or equipment. Protect the research time of publishing faculty members who do work on such projects. Arrange for joint authorship of articles on teaching or service projects. (You may have to be the second author yourself.) Include funds for reassigned time or summer stipends in grant proposals for teaching or service projects. When all else fails, shift uncooperative faculty members to areas where they will do the least harm.
Constituency Relations
Other departments are watching what is happening to foreign languages to gauge what might be in store for them. As chair, I have never been able to count on other departments, whether in the College of Arts and Sciences or in the professional schools, for concrete, as opposed to verbal, support of departmental foreign language programs. The reason was, and still is, fear that a strong foreign language requirement will reduce the number of majors in other programs. This fear has been exacerbated by the concerns about productivity. At Plattsburgh, even the international business and area studies programs were reluctant to require their students to take foreign language courses. At ECU, some arts and sciences departments--sociology, for one, fearing low-productivity ratings--have increased the number of their majors by adding a BS degree, which unlike the BA does not require two years of a foreign language. Philosophy is very worried. Not only does it graduate few majors but also it is a more likely candidate for Internet-based consortia than foreign languages are. Even the study of English is not safe; students are moving away from literature into composition and rhetoric or technical writing. Perhaps this is a very good time to strengthen interdisciplinary ties and develop alliances of one's own. The self-interest of other departments that has worked against foreign languages in the past may, in the future, work in our favor, if we approach the problem creatively (Henning, "Breaking the Pattern").
Just as I have never been able to count on other departments for support, I have also not been able to count on the community. State legislatures and boards of education are not always favorably disposed to allocating funds for foreign languages and cultures. The problems are even greater at the local level, where citizens must actually pay for schools through their taxes. Here foreign language programs are often considered luxuries, and they are cut when school budgets are under fire. Then there are community service organizations and local businesses. What kind of contact do they have with people of other cultures?
In New York, at the state level, there appears to be more of an understanding of the importance of foreign languages, as well as some official support. The state requires all prospective teachers to complete one year of college foreign language study (although it considers American Sign Language a foreign language), and it recently included one semester of foreign language study in its core general education program. That's not much, but it's better than nothing. In the North Country, where Plattsburgh is located, foreign languages did have a place in the secondary schools, which is not surprising since the area borders on Quebec. Yet even there foreign languages were always in danger of consolidation because of the region's poor economic situation. In addition, there was a great deal of resentment directed toward the francophone Quebecois who flocked to the region in the summer. People in retail sales or tourism knew that their business would be helped by the use of French, but they were reluctant to put the time into learning it (Henning and Slater).
The situation in North Carolina is similar. Certain areas of the state, such as the triangle of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, the Triad district that includes Greensboro, and the Charlotte area, are quite cosmopolitan. There foreign languages have a chance. In rural eastern North Carolina, the situation is different. This area is not ethnically diverse. In recent years there has been an influx of Hispanics, largely as farm workers, though some have stayed on and taken other jobs. Rather than increasing the cultural awareness of the region, this influx has hardened some negative tendencies. Many local school districts are unwilling to spend money on the teaching of foreign languages. Foreign language instruction has all but disappeared from regional elementary schools and is disappearing from the middle schools. Foreign language instruction at the high school level is restricted to Spanish, with some pockets of French, Latin, and Japanese. Instruction in German can no longer be found east of Raleigh. Many community leaders in government and business do not see the need for foreign language and culture knowledge despite the growing number of international companies and employees in the area. They still subscribe to the notion that knowledge of English is sufficient. If they do recognize the value of knowing a foreign language, it is only that of knowing Spanish insofar as it enables them to deal more effectively with Hispanic migrants. At the same time, there is resentment at the cost of providing services to new ethnic populations.
In such contexts, articulation and networking take on a new purpose: to ensure the survival of the teaching of a variety of foreign languages and cultures. Beyond this bare minimum, we need to work toward a language instruction system that is both continuous and cumulative. Without a strong regional base at the precollegiate level, it is very hard for collegiate-level foreign language instruction to flourish. If parents and community leaders recognize the social and economic importance of learning a foreign language, they may support school budgets that include foreign language funding.
What can chairs do to improve the situation? Meet with school superintendents, boards of education, parent-teacher groups, educational collaboratives, focus groups, even your state legislators. Establish a department advisory board that includes community leaders. Develop public relations materials, such as newsletters, flyers, poster displays, and articles in local newspapers. Go on the road with promotional presentations of, for example, the value of foreign languages or the way foreign language skills are acquired. Most people, including many educators, have unrealistic expectations that can lead to frustration and the accusation of inefficiency (Byrnes). Develop joint preprofessionl programs with community colleges. Establish semiautonomous foreign language institutes to oversee foreign language programs for adults, for example, from business and social service agencies.3
For years now we have had to deal with the implications for foreign languages and literature of the shift in the conception of the university and the changing student body. Students are perceived as consumers whose short-term job-oriented goals determine what should be taught. Consequently, curricula increasingly focus on preprofessional skills in a narrow sense instead of building skills for a lifetime. The emphasis on efficiency, accountability, and productivity has led to a desire to downsize or eliminate major programs. Technology and new alliances that it might make possible are seen as solutions. These concerns have been around for a long time, but recently they have coalesced within the corporate university. I believe that, although they have found a home there, they are actually deeply rooted in the American attitude toward education.
Twenty-five years ago, fresh out of graduate school and already a language coordinator, I was first called on to defend the role of foreign language study in "modern industrial society," since the University of Wisconsin, Parkside, where I was teaching, had been created to minister to its needs by the State of Wisconsin. Why do we constantly find ourselves in the position of defending the teaching of foreign languages and literatures? Why of all the liberal arts disciplines are foreign languages and literatures so often considered expendable? Is philosophy more immediately relevant and practical? or history? or English literature for that matter? The reasons for our perennial problems go deeper than the corporate university and are grounded in the American attitude toward other peoples: isolationist, ethnocentric, even in some cases xenophobic.
Recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Allan Goodman, president of the Institute of International Education, wrote of a "general depreciation of an international outlook in American education." He quoted an article in Change noting that "'internationalization' may be closer to a buzz word than a deep-seated reality for most colleges and universities" in an era of tight budgets. The president of Duke University, Nannerl Keohane, spoke at Oxford University in 1998 of a "growing parochialism." "Since English is the dominant language of international scholarship," she said, "there is little incentive for American scholars to learn other languages." She added, "Because American scholarship is recognized as pre-eminent in many fields, there is little incentive to be current in the work done in other countries for many faculty members." A similar attitude can be found in professionals of many other fields, including business and engineering. Goodman attributes these attitudes to "the lack of a post-Cold War vision." I wonder how different they really were during the cold war.
At the same time, employers are seeking college graduates who have the ability to work in a global economy with people of diverse interests and cultures. Goodman reports that RAND studies of corporate hiring preferences, for example, reveal that companies need managers and employees with greater international knowledge and experience abroad than the ones they are currently hiring. Personnel directors believe that only such knowledge and experience allow employees to work effectively in cross-cultural teams for new product development and marketing. Moreover, recent United States Department of Education studies show that each year more than thirty federal agencies regularly recruit for some 34,000 professional positions requiring foreign language proficiency. Goodman warns that "if present trends continue, neither the government nor the private sector is likely to get the human resources each will need."
Within such a sociopolitical climate, chairs of departments of foreign languages and literatures can no longer afford to be simply teaching administrators. They need to be advocates, promoters, even lobbyists. Their role must be an increasingly public one, both on their campuses and in the community. This is how I would characterize the most significant change that I have perceived in my role as chair over the past decade. Many of the problems that I have tried to deal with have remained rather similar over all these years, but their implications are broader.
I also believe that the danger is much more widespread than it was in the past and threatens not only all foreign languages but the entire liberal arts core as well. I am not optimistic about our chances in the short run. For the moment, globalization means too often Americanization. In the long run, however, the pendulum may swing back toward foreign language study. As other regions of the world come into their own--Europe and Asia, for example--the importance of American culture and English will be diluted. Moreover, as the population of the United States becomes more ethnically and linguistically diverse, Americans may find that they need some level of foreign language skill either in their jobs or in their private lives. Perhaps, as Richard Lambert writes, there is hope that "America's devout monolingualism is about to change" (57). That would truly be a significant variation of the old pattern.
The author is Professor of French and Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages at East Carolina University. This article is based on her presentation at ADFL Summer Seminar East, 24-26 June 1999, in Nashville, Tennessee.
1From 1989 to 1997 I chaired the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at the State University College of New York, Plattsburgh. Plattsburgh is a comprehensive university in rural upstate New York, twenty-five miles from the Canadian border on the shores of Lake Champlain. It was established a hundred years ago as a normal school. As part of the large and diverse state-assisted system of higher education in New York, it is known for its centralized administration and its perennial budgetary problems. Plattsburgh draws most of its students from three regions of the state: the North Country, the capital district around Albany, and the New York City area. Most of its roughly six thousand students are first-generation college students with preprofessional orientations. It has a College of Arts and Sciences, in which is found the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, and two professional schools, including a School of Business. When I was chair, the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature included eight tenure-track faculty members and a couple of part-time adjuncts. It offered majors in French and Spanish, a minor in German, and courses in Russian and Portuguese. Both major programs were relatively healthy. Plattsburgh had no foreign language requirement, although students could complete the foreign language and culture requirement of the general education program with a year of a foreign language. All prospective teachers in New York State had to complete a year of foreign language study as well. Many students received college credit for high school foreign language work and placed out of the requirement.
Two years ago I became chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at East Carolina University in Greenville, two hours east of Raleigh and an hour from the coast, in rural North Carolina. It too was established about a century ago as a normal school. With eighteen thousand students and growing, ECU is the third largest university in a state system that is strongly supported by the legislature but tends to favor the state universities of the capital district, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State. Its central administration is also strong and its chancellor, Molly Broad, is known as an administrative and technological leader. Last year ECU was reclassified from a comprehensive university to Doctoral II on the basis of its graduate programs in the sciences. Its College of Arts and Sciences constantly vies for resources with the professional schools, which include the School of Medicine, the School of Music, and the School of Business. Most of ECU's undergraduates come from eastern North Carolina, one of the poorest and least cosmopolitan regions in the state, are the first in their families to attend college, and have preprofessional orientations. The Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures is composed of eighteen tenure-track, seven fixed-term, and four part-time faculty members. It offers majors in French, Spanish, and German, an interdisciplinary major in classical studies, as well as courses in Russian, Latin, ancient Greek, Italian, and Japanese. The health of its major program in Spanish is improving, but its majors in French and German are seriously ill. ECU has a four-semester foreign language requirement for all BA programs. Some students receive college credit for high school foreign language work but few place out of the requirement.
2Several months after presenting this paper, I was appointed to the team reviewing all the major foreign language programs in the University of North Carolina system. Consequently I was in a position to argue for a broader definition of productivity--a definition that took into account the many ways in which foreign language courses enrich non-foreign language programs. This enlarged definition involves thinking beyond the major paradigm. The review team stressed ways that foreign language programs could be strengthened and access to them increased. It did not recommend the elimination or consolidation of any programs.
3As Lambert points out, "Such adult instructional centers tend to be more than self-supporting and can provide funds that can be made available for the language departments' more general use" (35). Because of their potential for generating revenue, these adult courses are guarded by institutions that offer them. If you try to establish any, you may run into the opposition of local community colleges and divisions of continuing education, which have traditionally catered to this adult population.
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© 2000 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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