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JUNIATA College is an independent liberal arts institution of approximately 1,300 students that was founded in 1876 by members of the Church of the Brethren to prepare individuals “for the useful occupations of life.” This emphasis continues to be reflected today in the high percentage of students enrolled in areas like health and allied health professions, education, and business. Programs in arts and the humanities are small in comparison, and most of them—such as music, philosophy, religion, theater arts, and world languages and cultures—fulfill primarily a service function.
The Juniata campus currently contains forty-two buildings on over a thousand acres, including a 316-acre nature preserve located near campus. A field station on nearby Raystown Lake provides one of the most distinctive opportunities in environmental science in the nation, encompassing a complete watershed. Inaugurated in fall 2002, the William J. von Liebig Center for Science is a state-of-the-art classroom and laboratory facility that attests to the excellence of Juniata’s science programs. In recent years, nearly 95% of Juniata’s applicants have been accepted to medical, dental, optometry, podiatry, veterinary, and law schools. Juniata’s innovative and acclaimed outreach program Science in Motion was featured on ABC News, and in 2004 the college will host the National Science Olympiad, which puts Juniata in the company of large research universities such as Ohio State, Illinois, and Indiana.
Other Juniata programs that have earned national recognition include the peace and conflict studies program, a leader in the development of peace studies as an academic discipline and one of the oldest such programs in the United States. In 1992, Juniata’s Baker Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies initiated and hosted the International Seminar on Arms Control and Disarmament, making Juniata the first institution of higher education to cosponsor an educational program with the United Nations. And despite the modest numbers of students that major in world languages and cultures, Juniata’s Center for International Education offers an impressive array of study-abroad options, currently numbering more than thirty. Students who want to develop proficiency in French can choose among three sites in France (Lille, Nancy, and Strasbourg), while Spanish students may select among four Hispanic universities: two in Spain (Barcelona and Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville), one in Mexico (Universidad de las Américas), and one in Ecuador (Universidad San Francisco de Quito). Both French and Spanish also offer four-week summer immersion programs to prepare students for their junior year abroad or for students who are unable to study abroad for a semester or academic year.
Like many other United States colleges and universities, Juniata engaged in curricular review in the late 1960s and early 1970s and in 1971 adopted a new curriculum that phased out the existing three-semester foreign language requirement. By the late 1970s, the staffing of the Department of Foreign Language (later, the Department of World Languages) had shrunk from thirteen full-time faculty members to five, the Spanish program’s staffing had been halved from four to two full-time professors, and the French program had been reduced to one tenure-track position and an adjunct instructor. During the 1980s, language enrollments continued to dwindle as the college’s overall student enrollments declined and the office of admissions increasingly targeted its student recruitment efforts at the college’s more prestigious programs in the natural sciences.
By the early 1990s, the foreign language faculty generally felt alienated from the rest of the faculty, which had shown at best a benign neglect and often an open hostility toward language study as an integral part of a liberal arts education. The administration did little or nothing to channel additional resources to language programs, nor had it addressed personnel problems that were negatively affecting student enrollment in foreign language courses. The situation deteriorated to the point that during the 1992–93 academic year, Spanish enrollments dropped to an average of 47 students a semester, and French averaged only 25 students a semester. The overall student enrollment average for that academic year was 1,062.
In fall 1992, tenure-track assistant professors were hired in French and Spanish. The timing of their hiring coincided with several other initiatives that helped revitalize the two programs. The professors in question are the authors of this narrative, and each will outline the steps taken that have produced healthy growth in their programs.
When I was hired, the Department of Foreign Languages was undergoing an extensive review and revision of curricular priorities and teaching methods, thanks largely to the work of my senior colleagues in Russian and German, who had participated in a self-study funded through the American Council on Education. That project led the chair of the department to try to move all language instruction toward oral-proficiency-based models of instruction and to implement ACTFL standards for measuring student outcomes. In accepting the position as French professor, I tacitly agreed to subscribe to a common philosophy of proficiency-based instruction and evaluation. Consequently, one of my first professional-development projects was to participate in an ACTFL OPI workshop. I also changed catalog descriptions and adapted materials for first- and second-year language courses to reflect our commitment to proficiency-based instruction.
The curriculum that I inherited represented the product of a long history of changes in personnel and in institutional priorities. There was little coherence in the four-year sequence. First- and second-year language course descriptions suggested the audiolingual approach from the 1970s. The intermediate content-level courses were outdated history-of-literature sequences, intended to introduce students to the entire history of French literature in two semesters after only two years of language study. Finally, there were numerous advanced courses in French literature, most of which had not been offered in many years because, not surprisingly, not enough students signed up for them.
Although the curriculum still contains inconsistencies, course offerings and descriptions now more closely reflect the proficiency-based teaching philosophy of the department. After introductory courses in language, students take intermediate courses in culture, conversation, and composition. The intermediate culture sequence has been divided into two semesters: one focuses on French history, and the other studies francophone regions and cultures outside the Metropole. I have instituted language and culture courses taught in English in an attempt to introduce French culture to a wider student population. The courses in translation are designed to meet the college’s general education requirements, which ensure a respectable student enrollment.
Although the Huntingdon community has almost no francophone population and Juniata students do not traditionally have a strong personal connection to French language or history, the college has been increasing its efforts to recruit students from Maine, who do have an interest in French and generally place directly into intermediate or advanced content-based French courses.
Juniata College requires only two years of language study before admission. Although most students easily meet this requirement before arriving at the college, a few students in high school enroll in French for this reason. Beyond the admission requirement, no language study is required of students, although some disciplines such as politics and art history strongly encourage it. The college does have academic distribution requirements of all students to ensure that they take courses that have been designated as international. In an admirable effort to internationalize the curriculum, however, this designation has been assigned to courses in almost all the academic departments or programs at the college. Consequently, students can now easily meet the international distribution requirement without studying a foreign language. Therefore preparing for study abroad and preparing for teacher certification have become the primary student motivations for studying French at Juniata College.
Internationalization Initiatives
We have revitalized the study-abroad programs in French, primarily through increased faculty involvement with the exchange sites. At the end of my first year of teaching at Juniata College, the International Programs Office (now the Center for International Education) paid for my travel to meet our partners at the Catholic University of Lille and at the Brethren College Abroad programs in Strasbourg and Nancy. Developing and nurturing direct faculty involvement with the exchange programs has been critical in increasing student interest in these programs. The primary obstacle with study abroad, especially in European institutions, is the lack of understanding about how the academic course work completed in the partner institution corresponds to the student’s specialization or program of study. Many faculty members, parents, and students have the misconception that study abroad, particularly in France, is a year or semester off. I continue to work closely with the Center for International Education (CIE) to inform teachers and students of what courses and requirements outside language study can be fulfilled at our French sites. The International Education Committee (IEC) has played a key role in disseminating this information. Because of my work with the committee and the CIE, I have become convinced that faculty involvement in developing and maintaining study-abroad exchanges is vital for the success of such programs. The combined efforts of the CIE, the IEC, and our exchange partners have led to increased interest in French study and, most important, increased faculty support at Juniata College.
A recent administrative initiative has been put in place to increase student interest in study in France and Germany. Over the past twenty years, these exchange sites in particular have seen far larger numbers of students coming from France and Germany than we have been able to send. Since these programs were instituted as student-for-student exchanges, Juniata College finds itself with a large surplus of tuition credits with the partner institutions. The president of the college has decided to offer these tuition credits to incoming students in the form of a scholarship. Qualified freshmen who agree to study in France or Germany during the junior year will pay no tuition for that year. The scholarship has been a powerful recruiting tool, although it is still too early to see what effect it will have on overall enrollments in French. In its first year, the scholarship has clearly attracted a few highly qualified language students in French and German. It remains to be seen, however, if the presence of these language stars on campus will encourage greater interest in studying French among the general student population.
In addition to the traditional year and semester abroad programs, the IEC instituted summer study-abroad opportunities in 1995. Although it was a huge success the first year, the program foundered thereafter. Nonetheless, the summer program was revived last year when I agreed to accompany the group of students as a faculty chaperone. I worked closely with the faculty at the exchange site and even taught one of the courses. Eleven students enrolled in the program, which was the largest summer-abroad study group that we had last year. Once again, this experience indicates the importance of faculty involvement in study-abroad programs.
Extracurricular Initiatives
The French Club has played a vital role in maintaining student interest in French studies. Club events, such as informal dinner gatherings and cultural immersion events, which generally involve food or film, provide an opportunity for the anglophone students studying French and the students from France or francophone regions studying at the college to interact with each other. The most successful event sponsored jointly by the French Club and the Department of Foreign Languages is an annual field trip to Quebec. Participating students visit a francophone region that is close to Juniata College geographically, although distant culturally. They often return with an increased interest in language study as well as with the intention to incorporate French into their program of emphasis. At a small residential liberal arts college in a rural location like ours, student enthusiasm and word-of-mouth advertising are critical to maintaining or increasing student enrollments.
Advising
In our academic environment, where there are almost no curricular incentives for foreign language study, advising can help compensate for that lack. Juniata College requires that each student has a program and a general adviser, who cannot be from the same department. Not surprisingly, I am the secondary adviser for most of my advisees. I strongly advise these students to continue language study or to incorporate French in their program of emphasis. I also try to build coalitions with other advisers in different disciplines who can encourage students to enroll in foreign language courses or pursue study abroad. The department has made considerable progress in cultivating support from advisers in history, politics, education, international studies, peace and conflict studies, social work, and art history. These faculty partnerships, however, are difficult to formalize and require a lot of individual networking.
The biggest potential danger facing French studies is the nature and size of the program itself. Although the administration has shown great support for language instruction by hiring a two-semester visiting French teacher through the Institute of International Exchange, French is still staffed by one full-time faculty member and a part-time instructor. Curricular continuity, quality of instruction, involvement in study abroad, and public relations all fall on the shoulders of the faculty member. It can be difficult for one person to represent all things French in a community with few connections to France. Faculty burnout is perhaps the biggest danger the program will face if the administrative or financial priorities of the college change in the near future.
In 1989, Juniata’s president affirmed the college’s commitment to enhancing the international dimension of its academic programs. The college’s mission statement, revised in 1992, reflects this commitment: “As a member of the international community, Juniata extends the student’s academic experience into the world and encourages the free and open exchange of thought among peoples from distinct cultures and nations.” The president also formed a working group on international education and charged it with making recommendations to internationalize Juniata. In April 1993 this task force submitted the strategic plan for internationalizing Juniata College, which called for the International Programs Office to encourage more students to study foreign languages and study abroad, to support and facilitate the internationalization of the curriculum and cocurricular activities of the college, and to increase the number of degree-seeking students from other countries.
The associate dean for international programs, a committed advocate for foreign language study, also enhanced the study-abroad opportunities for students in Spanish-speaking countries. To reinvigorate this direct exchange, in January 1993 she and three faculty members visited the University of the Americas in Puebla, Mexico, an excellent study-abroad site for Juniata students but one to which Juniata had not sent any students for five years or so. At the same time, Brethren Colleges Abroad (BCA), a study-abroad consortium of which Juniata is a member, was establishing a new study-abroad program in Ecuador as an alternative to its long-standing program in Barcelona, Spain. The Ecuador site offered an exciting alternative for many students who combine studies in environmental science and ecology with Spanish.
The strategic plan also called for the formation of the International Education Committee (IEC), a broadly constituted group that advises the campus community on issues relating to international education and programs and that seeks to achieve the plan’s goals for internationalization. One early curricular initiative of the IEC was the creation of the international certificate. At Juniata, students have the option of designing individualized programs of emphasis, or they may fulfill the requirements of a designated program (i.e., major). The international certificate enables students to incorporate an international dimension into any program, whether individualized or designated, and its notation on the academic transcript allows students to highlight this dimension. Completion of the international certificate requires achievement of Intermediate-Mid oral language proficiency in a second language as measured by ACTFL’s OPI, an approved international educational experience, and at least twenty-one credit hours of courses designated as international.
In May 1995, the International Programs Office further expanded its study-abroad options by designing, in collaboration with two faculty members, a four-week Spanish immersion program at the Instituto de Estudios Avanzados de Oriente, in Orizaba, Mexico. This program serves both students who cannot fit a full semester or year of study abroad into their academic program and those who want or need a short-term immersion experience before studying abroad their junior year. Recently an increasing number of students have been participating following their freshman year, and in summer 2000 the program was extended to include the possibility of taking part in a six-week, noncredit internship following completion of the immersion program. Student participants have returned expressing enthusiasm about continuing their language study, and many have changed their study-abroad plans as a result of their immersion experience.
Increased administrative support has been accompanied by major changes in Spanish classroom instruction and additional cocurricular opportunities for students to develop their language and cultural proficiency. In spring 1993, with the encouragement of the department chair and with the administration’s financial support for the hiring of student assistants, the new Spanish professor developed weekly small-group review sessions for his Spanish 2 course. Sessions were loosely based on the Rassias method, with advanced students serving as peer instructors who implemented activities designed to provide intensive oral practice of material already covered in class. These review sessions, now an integral component of the two first-year courses, reflect the program’s commitment to proficiency-based instruction. The new junior member also assumed responsibility for the Spanish conversation table, which had been allowed to languish. This weekly gathering for informal conversation in Spanish was gradually integrated into the intermediate language courses, playing an important role in the third-semester course and in the conversation and composition course. Formats range from faculty-led to student-led and generated, and currently sessions are facilitated by Hispanic international students based on topics formulated by conversation and composition students or coordinated with topics being studied by the Spanish 3 students.
In addition to proficiency-based instruction, the Hunter College model, consisting of split-level content courses in literature and linguistics, was utilized to offer students who had completed the third-semester course more than one option in Spanish each semester. Courses such as Contemporary Hispanic Short Fiction, Contemporary Spain, and now Spanish Phonetics and Phonology are offered at both the 200 and 300 level, with additional assignments and higher proficiency expected of the upper-division students. Before this innovation, students who had completed the introductory sequence could take only one Spanish course a semester, and if there was a conflict and no accommodation could be reached, at times they were unable to continue their language study for a semester. Under the new system, students completing Spanish 3 always have at least two options among courses that are still largely language-acquisition driven, and more advanced students have at least two and now sometimes three options. Student feedback has generally been positive regarding the split-level courses, and although the model requires careful planning to establish clear and fair expectations for the two groups, when it works well, the more advanced, primarily study-abroad returnees serve as mentors and role models for their less advanced peers.
To foster the development of students’ language and cultural proficiency, numerous cocurricular activities have also been organized. In spring 1993, the new faculty member founded the Spanish Club, which has sponsored a variety of programs on and off campus. By fall 1996 the club typically had over fifty students at its initial meeting of the year, and there has been strong and enthusiastic participation in club programs, which include the following:
an Immersion Day on a Saturday each fall at a beautiful cabin owned by the college, where thirty to forty Spanish students and alumni, Hispanic international students, and faculty members spend about eight hours playing, singing, eating, and interacting entirely in Spanish
field trips to places such as New York City, Washington, DC, Pittsburgh, Penn State, and Philadelphia to attend plays, concerts, and lectures, as well as to sample Hispanic cuisine
a Hispanic video series that typically shows four films a semester
guest lecture series hosted in cooperation with other departments such as politics, history, and peace and conflict studies on topics relating to Hispanic cultures
salsa and merengue dance lessons and Latino dances held for the campus community
fund-raising drives and school supplies collections for orphanages in the Dominican Republic and Honduras as well as an elementary school in Guatemala
immersion parties and mixers at which study-abroad returnees report on their international experience
All these cocurricular activities have increased the visibility of the Spanish program on campus.
Another important initiative was the design and approval in spring 1994 of designated programs of emphasis in the four languages—French, German, Russian, and Spanish—offered by the Department of Foreign Languages. According to the senior member of the Spanish program, a similar proposal made in the 1980s had not been approved by the faculty’s curriculum committee, conveying the mistaken impression that students could not major in foreign languages and leaving the department primarily to play a service function. The designated program of emphasis in Spanish, which requires forty-five hours in Spanish, including at least thirty-one hours beyond Spanish 3, also provides students with a model which they can use to design an interdisciplinary program. Juniata recruits few students who initially plan to major in world languages and cultures, but the college offers an excellent menu of study-abroad options and has become increasingly successful in interesting students in creating interdisciplinary programs. These individualized programs incorporate Spanish and a semester or a year of study abroad with disciplines such as art history, environmental science, the health professions, peace studies, international business, international relations, social work, and psychology.
The curriculum committee also approved the department’s guidelines for declaring a secondary emphasis (i.e., minor) in any of the four languages, which require that students complete a minimum of fifteen credit hours chosen in consultation with their language adviser beyond the third-semester course. Because of the attractiveness of the Mexico summer immersion program and the option of earning an international certificate, a growing number of students who cannot pursue a full-fledged program in Spanish are choosing to integrate a secondary emphasis in Spanish into their program.
In spring 1999, the collaborative efforts of the foreign language and education departments produced a dual K-12 certification program in which students may earn certification in any two languages of the three—French, German, and Spanish—currently offered for teaching certification. This certificate responds to a growing need, particularly in small rural school districts, for teachers qualified to teach more than one language. Although in recent years four Juniata students have pursued dual certification in elementary education and Spanish, no student has yet completed the dual language certification program.
The Spanish program suffered what appeared to be a major setback in 1996, when tight budget constraints and the desire to establish a new academic program in criminal justice led the administration to eliminate the second tenure-track position in Spanish on the retirement of the Spanish program’s senior member. The Department of Foreign Languages lobbied vigorously and on the strength of growing enrollments was able to convince the administration to hire a full-time lecturer and to restore the tenure-track position if enrollments warranted it. The applicant pool for the position was small, but the college was fortunate to hire a highly qualified candidate. The decision had been made to redefine the second position for a specialist in applied linguistics, since the other Spanish professor and the rest of the department were all literature specialists. The lecturer taught at Juniata for three years, and by the third year enrollments had grown enough for the administration to reconsider its decision and reinstate the tenure-track position.
In addition to providing excellent language instruction and making a strong contribution to the planning and implementation of cocurricular activities, the lecturer developed a much-needed course, Methods for Foreign Language Education, that filled a major gap in the college’s teacher certification program. Juniata has offered K–12 certification in French, German, and Spanish for many years and, in fact, requires students who are seeking certification to study abroad in the target culture for their entire junior year and to achieve Advanced-Low oral proficiency in the target language. Nevertheless, students’ training in methodology was limited to a generic course, Methods for Secondary Education, taught by the Education Department, which did little to address the discipline-specific aspects of second language acquisition. The new course has greatly enhanced the preparation of our secondary Spanish students, and the number of students seeking certification in Spanish has increased substantially since the course was introduced in fall 1997.
Juniata was again fortunate to hire a highly qualified and capable applied linguist, first as an instructor in 1999 while she completed her dissertation and then for the reinstated tenure-track position. Numbers had grown sufficiently by the spring of 1999 that the provost also authorized hiring an adjunct Spanish instructor, a Juniata alumnus, to teach one or two introductory Spanish courses each semester, which he did extremely well for the next five semesters.
Besides the high quality of language instruction, three initiatives have contributed to higher enrollments in Spanish. First, a change was made in the scheduling of Spanish 3, the course in which most strong Spanish high school students place, so that it would not conflict with freshman biology, a course that nearly half the freshman class take during their first semester. Second, language study is now being more effectively promoted at summer freshman orientation sessions. Starting in summer 1996, a new skills assessment, the University of Wisconsin College-Level Placement Test, was selected and administered during orientation sessions, replacing the out-of-print MLA Cooperative Foreign Language Tests that until then had been given during the first week of classes. For the first time in summer 2000, the placement exam was offered on demand rather than in one time slot at the end of the orientation sessions. This change dramatically increased the number of students taking Spanish. The Spanish faculty now works more closely with the student orientation leaders and the office that runs the orientation sessions and has also met with freshman advisers to clarify placement procedures for them before their freshman advising sessions. In conjunction with the aggressive promotion of study abroad by the Center for International Education, incoming freshmen are now getting the loud and clear message that studying world languages and engaging in an international educational experience are valuable assets in an increasingly global economy. Finally, the Spanish program follows up with students who have taken the placement test but who do not register for Spanish during their first semester, encouraging them to register in the spring semester when they have more room in their schedules to take electives.
Recent Departmental Initiatives
In fall 2000, the Department of Foreign Languages became the Department of World Languages and Cultures, a name that more accurately represents the mission of the department and that avoids the stigma associated with “foreign.” The name change was just one of a series of measures proposed by the department at the conclusion of its periodic program review, a college-wide assessment process undertaken every five years. This review included a self-study document; an external review by an alumni, trustee, and foreign language professional team; and input from the faculty Academic Planning and Assessment Committee; it culminated in a memo of commitment negotiated with the administration and ultimately approved by the board of trustees. As part of this process, the Spanish program committed to making an additional contribution to the college’s cultural analysis sequence—offering an annual course rather than a course every four semesters—in exchange for the contracting of a visiting language instructor (VLI) who would teach two courses each semester. VLIs are hired through the Institute of International Education’s Foreign Language Teaching Assistant Program on a yearly basis, and they replace the adjunct Spanish instructor. Such an arrangement means a loss of program continuity because of yearly instructor turnover, but it contributes a well-qualified native Spanish speaker to complement the two nonnative speaker full-time faculty members, and it represents a net gain of three courses for the Spanish program over a two-year cycle. The first VLI was contracted for the 2001–02 academic year, and the arrangement is currently working well.
A priority that emerged from the program review was to improve the recruitment of incoming students interested in making world language study an integral part of their program of emphasis. While the Department of World Languages and Cultures has long participated actively in admission events, the decision was made to name a departmental liaison to the enrollment office to enhance communication and offer input on strategies to enroll more internationally oriented students. The department is also redesigning its departmental Web site to make it a more effective recruitment tool, since research indicates that prospective students increasingly turn first to the Internet to aid them in their college search.
The department is also working to develop relationships with language teachers in area schools. In one initiative the junior member in Spanish now shares supervision of student teachers in Spanish with the Education Department, which has enabled her to establish contacts with cooperating teachers and administrators. Language in Motion is another initiative. In this program advanced world language and international students from Juniata prepare language and cultural activities that they present to language classes in area schools. This initiative fulfills a valuable community service and outreach function, and it is hoped that it will also serve to recruit world language students as teachers and students. Inaugurated during the 2000–01 academic year by the Center for International Education, in 2002 this program received the Andrew Heiskell Award for Innovation in International Education from the Institute of International Education in the category Internationalizing the Campus.
The Impact of International Students
The growing number of international students at Juniata undoubtedly exerts a positive influence on language enrollments. The creation of the intensive English program in 1994, another of the key recommendations of the 1993 strategic plan for internationalization, has played a major role in bolstering the international student population, in the categories of both ESL students and four-year degree-seeking international students. Since 1993–94, the number of international students at Juniata has more than tripled, from nineteen (1.8% of the total student enrollment in 1993–94) to an average of sixty-seven a year since 1996–97 (5.5% of the total student enrollment), reaching a high of seventy-six, or 6% of the student population in 2000–01. This growth increases opportunities for intercultural exchange, which led one Juniata student to undertake Spanish study at the introductory level, study abroad in Barcelona during his junior year, and ultimately marry the Spanish exchange student who had inspired his sudden passion for things Spanish. Although the Spanish program has employed Hispanic international students as review instructors since the mid-1990s and encouraged them to participate in cocurricular activities such as Spanish Club and the Spanish Conversation Table, the program now hires several each semester to facilitate conversation at the Spanish table, and a number of them also work as Spanish tutors through the Office of Academic Support Services. The vast majority of these students are enthusiastic ambassadors for Hispanic cultures, and their presence highlights the need to develop Spanish language and Hispanic cultural proficiency.
Budgetary Considerations
Departments and academic programs at Juniata have limited control over finances, and consequently the Department of World Languages and Cultures has been constrained in the types of initiatives that it can pursue. Over the past five years, a new president and new provost have provided much stronger financial support for the department, as evidenced in particular by the reinstatement of the second tenure-track position in Spanish, the hiring of a Spanish adjunct, and now the agreement to provide visiting language instructors in French, German, and Spanish, a significant staffing increase for all three programs. Recently the provost designated internationalization as one of three special focus areas for the college’s Middle States Reaccreditation process, which has just been successfully completed.
The departmental budget, administered by the department chair, includes lines for student assistant wages, field trips, lecturers, professional memberships, office and instructional supplies, travel, and telephone. Funding for special projects and instructional technology, such as a Macintosh iMac computer lab, which the department shares with the Education Department, is obtained by submitting proposals either to an annual capital funds budget or to the office of campus technology services. Faculty development funding is allocated through a standing faculty committee, the Professional Development Committee. The Spanish program is also fortunate to be able to count on support from an endowed fund established by a Juniata alumni couple, which generates about $4,000 annually for faculty development activities in Latin America. These monies have underwritten many of the initiatives outlined above and have supported faculty research and travel to Latin America for professional conferences.
Juniata’s Spanish program has made dramatic strides forward during the past decade. Its enrollments have grown from an anemic 46 in spring 1993 to a robust 129 in spring 2002. Graduating Spanish students demonstrate Intermediate-High to Advanced oral proficiency as measured by ACTFL guidelines, a testimony to the quality of the academic and cocurricular programs in Spanish. The program’s success is the result of an ongoing attempt to internationalize the college in which faculty and administrators have collaborated to design and implement new programs while strengthening already existing ones.
Current enrollment trends for French and Spanish indicate that both programs have been able to maintain the increased enrollments that they achieved during the period from 1995 to 1999, which are particularly significant at the advanced level. Further growth is contingent on curricular changes and on the investment of additional resources, particularly in the areas of student recruitment and staffing, but if the department can capitalize on the momentum already achieved, the future looks bright indeed for the Juniata French and Spanish programs.
Michael Henderson
Henry Thurston-Griswold
| 1995 | 1999 | 2001 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| French | |||
| Introductory sequence | 24 | 29 | 23 |
| Advanced courses | 3 | 15 | 15 |
| Majors | 0 | 6 | 3 |
| Spanish | |||
| Introductory sequence | 66 | 69 | 70 |
| Advanced courses | 13 | 38 | 32 |
| Majors | 3 | 8 | 11 |
© 2003 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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