31, no. 1 (Fall 1999): 03-04
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ADFL Updates
MLA Receives Mellon Grant to Study Good Practices in Foreign Language Programs
The Mellon Foundation has awarded the MLA a grant of $365,000 for a project entitled "Models of Good Practice: A Study of Innovation in Foreign Language Programs in United States Colleges and Universities, 1994-99." In response to international competency needs, uneven enrollment patterns in different languages, changing student demographics, and fiscal constraints in higher education, the field has undergone considerable change in the last several decades. In consultation with the Advisory Committee on Foreign Languages and Literatures and the Executive Committee of the ADFL, the MLA agreed that it was time to take a field-wide look at curricular innovation. With the assistance of a research firm, the association will conduct a two-part project, unique in its scope and depth, to identify and investigate departments that have effectively organized language learning. Phase 1, a general survey of practices in all 2,707 foreign language departments in the United States, will seek information about administrative, programmatic, and curricular developments and attempt to identify innovations that have improved outcomes for language learners. Researchers will contextualize this information in terms of institutional type and size, departmental type (multilanguage, single language), languages taught, language requirements, and highest degree offered. The results, to be published in the ADFL Bulletin, will give the field an overview of practices that build linguistic and cultural competence in students, attract enrollments, and maintain a strong place for languages on campus.
From the responses to phase 1 researchers will choose a group of institutions for more detailed examination in phase 2. This subset will consist of departments with strong enrollments and relatively large numbers of advanced students and will represent different languages and institutional types. Researchers will examine such features as language requirements, departmental mission, staffing patterns, departmental structure, support for innovation, connections to secondary school programs, uses of technology, study abroad, systems of evaluation and testing, language centers, and interdisciplinary alliances to determine how these characteristics contribute to successful programs. Phase 2 will provide a multidimensional portrait of effective language programs and will culminate in a publication consisting of a full account of these programs and a detailed discussion of funding.
2000 ADFL Summer Seminars
Planning has begun for 2000 ADFL Summer Seminars West and East. Seminars provide a congenial forum for department chairs, language coordinators, and program administrators to discuss life and work in departments of foreign languages. At its fall meeting, the ADFL Executive Committee establishes the seminar program on the basis of issues raised at the past summer's seminars. The 2000 seminars will again feature preseminar workshops for new and recently appointed chairs. Seminar West, 1-4 June, will be hosted by David Foster and the Department of Languages and Literatures at Arizona State University, Tempe. Seminar East, 29 June-2 July, will be hosted by Richard Zipser and the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Delaware, Newark.
The June 1999 ADFL Seminars in Palo Alto and Nashville brought together 140 department administrators to share ideas and concerns and to establish networks of supportive contacts. One chair at the Vanderbilt seminar wrote, "It was all very good. As a new chair, though, I liked particularly those sessions bearing most directly on practice and judgment. There was an excellent balance of the practical and the reflective and the theoretical. I left feeling both humble and more confident than before, having heard firsthand from successful presenters how a language department can do well. Just being in the presence of others in my shoes and sharing thoughts and being assured that there's a network out there, all this was confidence building." A participant at the Stanford seminar sent along the following comment: "As always, I enjoyed interacting with colleagues in my discipline. The seminar is an opportunity for me to take the pulse of the state of department chairing. The informal exchanges are just as valuable as the presentations." Seminars offer three days of intense professional talk as well as opportunities for enjoying the cultural and natural resources of the community.
Details about speakers and topics in Arizona and Delaware will be announced in forthcoming issues of the Bulletin and on the ADFL Web site, and a brochure containing details about housing, meals, and excursions will be mailed to ADFL members in early spring. Chairs are urged now to encumber funds for June. ADFL comprehensive membership allows departments to establish early funding for the seminars. The $250 registration fee ($300 for nonmembers) includes most meals but not housing. For further information, please write or call Elizabeth Welles, Director, or David Goldberg, Associate Director, ADFL, 10 Astor Place, New York, NY 10003-6981 (212 614-6325; adfl@mla.org).
Job Search Workshops and Mock Interview Session for Candidates and Interviewers at the MLA Convention in Chicago
In conjunction with this year's MLA convention in Chicago, ADFL will again sponsor three special sessions on the job search in foreign language departments. This year, job candidates are invited to attend "A Preconvention Workshop for Job Seekers: The Job Search in Foreign Languages," at 3:30-4:45 p.m. on Monday, 27 December. Department chairs from a two-year college, a small liberal arts college, and a comprehensive public university will discuss hiring practices and working conditions at their institutions. Members of department search committees are invited to attend "A Preconvention Workshop for Members of Search Committees: The Job Search in Foreign Languages," cosponsored by ADFL and ADE, also to be held at 3:30-4:45 p.m. on Monday, 27 December. The mock interview session will offer candidates an opportunity to view and critique staged job interviews. The session will be held at 9:00-10:15 p.m. on Monday, 27 December. Additional ADFL-sponsored and related foreign language sessions at the convention are listed on pages 88-89 of this issue of the Bulletin.
MLA Assistance to Advanced Graduate Students
The Executive Council of the MLA has again allotted funds to provide partial travel reimbursement in the amount of $100 to advanced graduate students who are members of the association in the 1999 calendar year and who will travel to the 1999 convention in order to attend preconvention workshops, sessions in their areas of scholarly interest, meetings with job counselors, or interviews. The council is particularly concerned with helping students who have no support for convention attendance from their institutions or other sources and who incur costs for travel to and from the convention. Funds are available to cover award up to 150 students; if more apply, recipients will be selected at random.
Letters of application must reach the MLA by 2 November 1999, by mail to Robert Blondeau, Programs Office, MLA, 10 Astor Place, New York, NY 10003-6981, or by fax to 212 533-0680. Fax transmissions may be used to meet the deadline, but they must be followed by signed letters. Applications by e-mail will not be accepted. Each letter should include a brief statement by the student stipulating that he or she has no external support for travel to the convention, together with a statement on university letterhead signed by the student's dissertation director or department chair confirming that the student is enrolled in a doctoral program at the signer's institution and has met all requirements for the PhD except the dissertation.
© 1999 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
