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AS A member of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Valparaiso University, I often meet with prospective students and their parents. These students have generally studied a foreign language in high school and are anxious to continue in college, considering a major in French, German, or Spanish. As we chat about topics such as class size and study abroad, however, almost invariably either parent or student asks, “But what can you do with a foreign language major?”
The concern implicit in this question, of course, is that there be a link between students’ courses of study and the profession they hope to pursue. While this concern is not new, it is more and more frequently expressed, and programs in foreign languages need to pay attention to it. As Mark Pietralunga puts it, “students are interested in pursuing studies in a foreign language as a means of enhancing their intellectual horizons and deepening their knowledge of a language with the aim of using it for careers in business, government service, and law, to name a few areas” (18). It is increasingly clear that foreign language programs are strengthened when they can answer that prospective student’s question, when they can provide opportunities for students to link their interest in foreign language and culture (in its broadest sense) to distinct career paths. Entering into collaborative arrangements with other academic units can be an effective way of accomplishing that.
At Valparaiso University, the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures has for some twenty years been an active partner in an interdisciplinary major called International Economics and Cultural Affairs (IECA). The IECA major requires students to pursue advanced work in their chosen language while preparing them broadly for several internationally focused career paths in such areas as business, economics, and government service. It attracts academically strong students, keeps them enrolled in upper-level foreign language courses, and helps maintain a relatively high number of foreign language majors through the option of a double major. At a time when some foreign language programs are shrinking, the IECA program has been crucial in helping foreign language programs at Valparaiso maintain their vitality.
Valparaiso University and the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
Valparaiso University is a private, religiously affiliated, comprehensive institution located in Valparaiso, Indiana. Primarily an undergraduate residential school, it enrolls about 3,600 students, most of traditional college age. There are about 1,900 students in the College of Arts and Sciences, where the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures and the IECA program reside.
The Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures has a full-time faculty of eleven. Students in IECA may choose Chinese, French, German, Japanese, or Spanish as their language of specialization from among the languages taught. The department offers majors in French, German, and Spanish (requiring 27 credits of coursework beyond the third-semester level), and those IECA students who pursue a double major may combine IECA and any of these three languages (we do not offer Japanese or Chinese majors).
The goal of the program in international economics and cultural affairs is to give students a broad theoretical and conceptual background in the study of international affairs, with expertise in one foreign language and the area where that language is spoken. It is distinct from majors in international business or international relations, emphasizing breadth and integration of knowledge along with advanced skills in a foreign language.
The program is a highly structured 54- to 56-credit major (of 124 total credits required for graduation) with two primary curricular focuses (students must take five courses in economics and five in foreign language) and three support focuses (students must have two courses in geography, two in history, and two in political science). Courses included in the IECA curriculum are all regularly taught as part of the participating department’s regular curriculum by that department’s faculty.
The IECA curriculum is designed so that some courses are taken by all IECA majors (e.g., the economics courses and comparative politics) while others are specific to a single language and geographic area (history, regional geography, or foreign language, for example). This structure helps ensure that students have a certain regional expertise, both linguistic and cultural, and that they are knowledgeable as well in the global nature of economic and political relationships. As seniors, all IECA majors complete an individual research project, a sort of capstone interdisciplinary experience. The first IECA majors graduated in 1982, and the total number of majors in a given year is generally between forty-five and sixty; in spring 2000, there were about fifty majors (first-year students through seniors).
Of IECA graduates, about 60% go on to careers in the world of business (usually, but not always, internationally focused), 20% have careers in the area of education (though generally not foreign language teaching), 10% work in government service, and 10% have positions in other service-oriented organizations. About 33% of IECA graduates continue to graduate school, generally in MBA or MIBS programs, public policy programs, or law school.
Connections among IECA and the foreign language programs are both curricular and administrative and date back to the origin of the IECA program. The major was created in the late 1970s with the primary impetus coming from the Departments of Economics and Foreign Languages and Literatures. As the curriculum was designed, planners secured the cooperation of at least one key person in each of the departments involved: each of these persons would help shape the curriculum and be a “lobby” for the program with colleagues in that department. Administrative leadership for the program has always remained within the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, though curricular decisions are made by an administrative committee composed of representatives of each of the academic areas involved.
The language courses required of IECA majors specializing in French, German, and Spanish are advanced-level courses (fourth semester and above) and, with the exception of one Spanish course, are taught exclusively in the target language. This mix of courses aims to develop students’ language skills in general as well as introduce them to business language and help them gain familiarity with the target culture in a broad sense. The courses are as follows:
Composition and Conversation (fourth-semester language)
Business Language
Contemporary Language through the Media
Introduction to Civilization
Introduction to Contemporary Literature and Fine Arts
These courses are very similar across the languages. All are offered on regular rotation, and are either required or elective courses in the French, German, or Spanish major. Students specializing in Chinese or Japanese must also take five courses in their language, but they may start at the beginning level of language instruction and have one course in Asian literature or literature and fine arts, taught in translation, in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures.
A crucial connection between IECA and Valparaiso’s foreign language programs is that students may double major. Every foreign language course required for the IECA major (with the exception of one Spanish class) may simultaneously count toward the appropriate language major, and students need take only approximately four additional advanced foreign language courses to complete the language major. Indeed, nearly 60% of IECA majors are also majoring in French, German, or Spanish. These students see a major in a foreign language as giving them more intellectual breadth as well as offering them further opportunities to hone their language skills. In addition, both IECA and foreign language programs encourage students to study abroad and make it possible for some courses taken abroad to substitute for required IECA or foreign language courses.
A number of factors have contributed to the success of the IECA major at Valparaiso University and to its very positive relation with the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. Some are curricular, others administrative.
First, the IECA curriculum is highly structured and provides depth as well as breadth of study. The number of academic areas included in the major is limited to five, and the course selection in each academic area is organized so that students have sequenced courses. With such a structure, students are more likely to feel that they are gaining in-depth knowledge and less likely to feel as if they are “jacks of all trades and masters of none,” as is sometimes the case in interdisciplinary programs. The senior capstone experience is also important in pulling together the various academic strands of the major.
Further, the level of foreign language achievement expected of the IECA major is quite high. This requirement, along with the five mandatory economics courses, makes the program an academically rigorous one--and it has a reputation as such on campus. It also means that IECA majors are enrolled not just in lower-level language courses (where enrollments are already satisfactory) but also in upper-level courses that might otherwise have small enrollments. In fact, enrollment of IECA students in advanced courses (beyond Composition and Conversation) averaged nearly 20% of total enrollment in those courses in the 1999-2000 academic year, a not insignificant number.
When the IECA program was created, care was taken to include courses that already existed within the various department curricula, in order not to strain department resources. In the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, only two new courses per language were developed: Business Language and Contemporary Language through the Media. But these were designed to be attractive to students majoring in the corresponding language, thus ensuring good enrollment and taking maximum advantage of limited resources. Beyond the foreign language curriculum, many of the courses required for the IECA major simultaneously fulfill university general education requirements (social sciences, history, international diversity, fine arts), making it easier for students to complete the major and still fulfill graduation requirements in eight semesters.
We feel it is important to provide opportunities outside the classroom to create a sense of unity among IECA students, because of the diversity of languages and coursework in which they are involved. We organize a variety of programs each year, including a large role-play simulation activity in which all IECA majors take part, a program during which students who have returned from study abroad describe political and economic events that took place when they were abroad, and oral presentation by seniors of the results of their final research projects.
The administrative link between IECA and foreign language programs has remained close. First, the chair of IECA has traditionally been a member of the faculty of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. Understanding the importance of a healthy IECA program to foreign language enrollments, a person with allegiance to both programs can work in the best interest of each when curricular, staffing, and other decisions are made. Second, academic advising for IECA majors is done by members of the foreign language faculty. We gladly accept this “burden,” since we can inform students in each program about the other, encouraging IECA majors to consider declaring a foreign language major when appropriate and vice versa. The IECA chair facilitates advising by supplying a schedule indicating the rotation of all IECA courses (in all departments) so that instructors can plan effectively with their advisees. (We distribute the entire rotation to the chairs of all IECA departments, which helps to remind them of their role within the program as well.)
During the creation of the IECA major, planning was truly collaborative: the active participation and enthusiasm of internationally minded individuals meant that all the involved programs were invested in IECA’s success. Collaboration remains imperative for the continued health of the program. Each semester, the IECA chair works closely with participating departments to be sure that courses are offered on their scheduled rotation, and, crucially, that required courses do not overlap on student schedules. In planning, we pay close attention to the varying priorities of the participating departments and work at maintaining communication and good will. And we try to keep a high profile among administrators--dean, provost, and other department chairs.
In order to promote the IECA program to prospective students, we work constantly on educating admissions office personnel about what IECA is and which prospective students should be alerted to its existence. We have also created low-cost promotional materials for prospective students on campus visits, and we give them out to any prospective student interested in foreign language. In these materials, we make clear what career paths are available to IECA graduates, giving real examples of alumni jobs, which range from foreign service officer to international sales director to director of study-abroad programs.
Challenges certainly remain for the IECA program and for Valparaiso’s foreign language programs. But we are convinced that working collaboratively has kept both programs strong. IECA does not replace our foreign language programs but is an important complement to them, offering broad professional options to those students who desire them. It has helped to lift the profile of internationally focused programs in general on our campus and, most important, has allowed us to serve talented foreign language students more fully.
© 2002 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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