|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
IN THE last six years we have introduced two business language degree programs in each of the three foreign languages (French, German, and Spanish) taught at Eastern Michigan University. One is called Language and International Trade (L&IT), in which both the B.A. and M.A. are offered; the other is an undergraduate major in business French, German, or Spanish. These new programs have grown rapidly: there are now over three hundred business language majors at EMU in all three languages combined. Most of this growth has occurred since the full implementation of the L&IT degrees in 1981, and tight budgets have made the programs difficult to manage adequately.
We set up our business language programs to expand the career relevance of foreign language study for students interested in international business. We still maintain our traditional foreign language major programs, but over the years they have fallen off dramatically with the decline of teaching foreign language as a career. We also perceived a coincidence of our interests as language teachers with national concerns: the United States urgently needs more Americans in international business with foreign language and area expertise. In formulating and refining strategies for our programs, we found valuable guidance in the articles on foreign language for careers by Richard Brod and Lucille Honig in the Modern Language Journal (April 1974) and by Brod in the ADFL Bulletin (Nov. 1974), the publications and conference presentations of Rose Hayden, the report of the President's Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies, and the publications of Congressman Paul Simon. We feel that our programs are fulfilling their purpose, which is to help students use their skills in the international field (see Career Placement, below).
The backbone of our new degree programs in the foreign language department consists of four advanced business language courses in each language at the junior and senior levels and two at the graduate level. As far as we know, ours is the largest concentration of business language courses among American universities. In these courses we teach business vocabulary, economic geography of the foreign country, and business communications; we also compare the economy, business structure and practices, and business legal system and culture of the foreign country and those of the United States. All topics are taught in the foreign language. We place primary emphasis on language acquisition and secondary emphasis on concept building.
To contrast briefly our two curricula: the Language and International Trade undergraduate major in German, French, and Spanish is an interdisciplinary sixty-semester-hour concentration major consisting essentially of a minor in language (with emphasis on business language) and a minor plus three to nine hours in business studies, nine to twelve hours in economics, six in geography, six in history, and six to nine in political science; our undergraduate majors in business French, German, and Spanish are not interdisciplinary but new configurations of the traditional thirty-semester-hour language major, with a concentration in the business language. We include in both degree programs courses in culture and literature. There are two such courses in L&IT and four in business French, German, and Spanish.
Our M.A. degree in L&IT is a thirty-hour program, consisting of a ten-to-twelve-hour concentration in business language and fifteen to eighteen hours in business and economics. This program is primarily for B.A. graduates—especially foreign language B.A. graduates—who have had little or no academic training in business or economics. After they have completed any necessary deficiency requirements, our students typically take intensive courses in marketing, management, accounting, finance, and economics, most of which have an international emphasis. In addition to enrolling B.A. graduates, we now find that our M.A. in L&IT is attracting increasing numbers of students who have completed the B.B.A. or M.B.A. or who transfer to us from M.B.A. programs. We are attracting attention to our College of Business in other respects as well: recently the department of marketing proposed that we set up a double masters degree program, in which students would receive both the M.B.A. and the M.A. in Language and International Trade.
One basic ingredient in our two business language programs is professional training, which at EMU we call cooperative education. We require for the L&IT degree and recommend for the degree in business French, German, and Spanish one full-time domestic or foreign cooperative education assignment of at least four months' duration in one or more functional areas of business administration. We consider these training assignments (for which students earn academic credit) valuable learning experiences. They allow students to test and apply their theoretical knowledge in actual working environments before leaving the university.
For students who are adequately qualified, we arrange co-op assignments in Germany, France, and Spain through our international exchange program. The program is the main reason for our rapid growth in student enrollment over the last few years. Since 1979 we have exchanged roughly eighty students with the professional universities of Nürtingen and Karlsruhe, with the Carl Duisberg Society in Germany, with the Paris Business School, with the Rouen Business School in Normandy, with the Center for Instruction and Research in Management near Nice, and with Complutense University in Madrid. In 1983 we plan to include other institutions in Europe and Latin America. So far, approximately one in eight of our students in L&IT and business French, German, and Spanish has participated in the exchange program. While on assignment our students work as full-time salaried trainees in business administration and have access to the instructional program of the sponsoring foreign business school. We have obtained very positive results in the three-year test phase of the exchange program, which has just been completed: first, because our students have been highly qualified and motivated and, second, because this kind of intensive hands-on learning experience is ideal for acquiring language and professional skills and for developing cultural sensitivity.
To qualify for an exchange placement, students must (1) demonstrate advanced foreign language proficiency and have at least basic knowledge of the foreign business language, (2) have completed at least a minor or its equivalent in business studies, (3) have had at least six months' previous work experience in an actual business setting, (4) exhibit a high level of responsibility and maturity, and (5) have at least a year's residency in EMU's foreign language department or in a consortial department (see Exchange Consortium, below).
Our exchange program has several clear advantages. First of all, we tie in directly to the internship programs already in place at our partner schools, thereby significantly reducing our program costs, which are limited primarily to placing foreign exchange students in United States firms. Second, our students are not confronted by the typical immigration and employment problems faced by other students who want to work abroad, because ours are officially enrolled at the sponsoring foreign school as students, not as regular employees in the labor force. And last, we can use our foreign exchange students in our own instructional program at EMU.
The firms that have participated in our program include Ford, General Motors, Bechtel, Gould, and Touche Ross in the United States; Hewlett Packard, Mercedes Benz, and Bosch in Germany; Renault, General Motors, and the Société Générale de Surveillance in France; and the Foreign Trade Bank and the Unesa Electric Corporation in Madrid. Other coop positions have been arranged with banks, public accounting firms, wholesale and retail firms, a management consulting company, high technology and technology transfer firms, and an electric utility company. In these firms our students have worked in accounting, finance, data processing, internal and external auditing, marketing, import-export, personnel, production planning and analysis, administrative services, business planning, and sales. While our students pay all travel costs themselves as well as an exchange program fee to EMU, overall costs are relatively low, because we require all employers to provide co-op salaries at least adequate to pay normal living expenses throughout the student's work assignment. And so far we have been able to arrange with most employers co-op salaries somewhat higher than basic living costs.
Because student enrollment in our advanced classes at EMU varies from term to term and student participation in the exchange program must be kept relatively stable, we have set up a consortium with language departments at other American universities to increase the pool of qualified students for the exchange program. German departments at M.I.T. and Rutgers were the first to join our program. They were followed by language departments at the universities of Rhode Island, West Virginia, and Florida; Tufts; Purdue; the Nazareth College of Rochester; New York University; State University of New York, Stony Brook; and California State University, Fullerton. We plan to expand the program to other universities in the near future. Beginning in 1983, our consortial partners will provide us with job development contacts in their areas, so that we will be able to place some of the incoming foreign exchange students outside Michigan. The first consortium student from M.I.T. has had particular success as a result of his exchange assignment in a German management consulting firm from June to December, 1980. After returning to the United States, he was admitted to Harvard Business School; the student notes that his successful participation in our program, which signified to his interviewers his maturity and understanding of the international business environment, was an important factor in his being admitted.
In addition to students, our international exchange program can accommodate language teachers and business professionals. In the summer of 1982 we sent one of our colleagues in German at EMU on a four-month assignment to the international department of a bank in Stuttgart. The positive results of this test placement led us to make American foreign language teachers a regular part of the exchange program. Such an experience can contribute much to a teacher's competence in teaching business language.
Similarly, we hope to exchange between American and foreign firms business professionals who want to work and study in the foreign country to develop their international business expertise. This new application of the exchange program will establish a close and mutually beneficial working relationship between us and the participating firms and will help us improve our instructional program by using both the visiting and the returning professionals as resource personnel.
Development of our programs has been financed for the most part by outside funds. Since 1977 roughly $200,000 in outside grants has been obtained by the foreign language department for program planning and implementation. This amount exceeds the level of internal funding by at least 5 to 1.
The first grant came from the Department of Education (Title VI) for 1977–79 and allowed us to plan and initiate the B.A. and M.A. in L&IT. The second came in 1980–81 from the government of West Germany for the purpose of designing and setting up the exchange consortium. It was a relatively small grant (seed money to cover travel, workshop, and conference expenses), but coming at a time when our budget had plummeted to practically nothing, the German grant was a godsend. In 1981 we obtained our third and largest grant, a three-year funding subsidy from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education of the U.S. Department of Education. Designed to bring the exchange program to full implementation by 1984, the FIPSE demonstration grant provides released time to the director of Language and International Trade to administer the international exchange program and consortium; secretarial assistance; and consultant, travel, and program maintenance expenses.
The programs will continue to need outside funding because of the deep and enduring financial crisis in Michigan higher education. It is impossible to predict when EMU will be able to commit hard money to institutionalize fully our successful program innovations.
Because our programs are relatively new, we have few statistics on the career placement of our graduates, who number only about forty so far. We are, however, encouraged by their first successes. To our knowledge, well over half of our graduates have found degree-related positions, almost all of which are in the private sector. Many of these students were interviewed by their prospective employers in the foreign language, and many regularly use their foreign language in their work. These first placement results run counter to what we had expected from American business, namely, that our students would be unlikely to find entry-level positions in international operations. But we do not have enough data yet to point to a consistent trend among American firms toward earlier assignments in the international area.
The positions our graduates have found include management trainee with Renault USA, office manager in foreign- and American-owned international firms, export manager in a division of Fruehauf, administrative assistant in a technology transfer firm in Germany, international logistics coordinator at a division of Ford in Michigan, sales coordinator with Ford of Canada (Quebec), accounting and finance director of the Buenos Aires office of Gould, Inc., customs brokerage agent, supply manager of a medical firm in Germany, program coordinator in the Michigan Office of Economic Development (Department of Commerce), and administrative manager of a German-owned environmental machine construction company in the United States. The last position mentioned puts the cap on one of our more conspicuous success stories in Language and International Trade. The story concerns a woman who came to us as a language graduate in German from Kalamazoo College. She had planned to teach German at the high school level in Michigan but could not find a teaching position because of cutbacks in the state's education budget. Toward the end of her M.A. studies in L&IT, we sent her to a twelve-month professional training position with Hewlett Packard in Germany. While she was in Germany she made contact with the above-mentioned machine construction company. After she received her degree from us in December 1980, the company brought her back to Germany for twelve months of management training. Just recently the firm assigned her to its United States headquarters in Chicago, as deputy vice-president for administration, to help manage the expansion of the German firm's American sales operations.
The author is Professor of German at Eastern Michigan University. This paper was presented at ADFL Seminar West, June 1982, at Carleton and St. Olaf colleges, Northfield, Minnesota.
© 1983 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
|
|---|
|
|
|
