26, no. 1 (Fall 1994): Back Matter
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Back Matter Fall 1994
Dorothy James to Receive the First ADFL Award for Distinguished Service in the Profession
The first ADFL Award for Distinguished Service in the Profession will be presented to Dorothy James, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY), at the 1994 MLA convention in San Diego. The award honors eminent scholar-teachers for exceptional contributions to the field of foreign languages and literatures at the postsecondary level. In nominating James for the award, Carolyn Richmond, president of the CUNY Council on Foreign Language Study and professor of Spanish at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, wrote, “Hers is the voice of our collective professional conscience, and the mirror she consistently holds up to us, the difficult questions she asks, the truths she is never afraid to articulate: all of this mysteriously reaches out to touch the (sometimes long-lost) teacher in each and every one of us, reminding us, constantly, of our special responsibility to our students.”
James was among the first to apply the ACTFL proficiency guidelines to the rethinking of a college-level literature curriculum. Under her leadership, the Department of German at Hunter College was awarded an NEH grant for a three-year project to establish a proficiency-based curriculum; the result has become a national model for postsecondary reform in language and literature. Beverly Harris-Schenz called James's approach
revolutionary in that it didn't blame the victim (“our poorly prepared students”), but rather sought workable solutions by empowering faculty to address the critical gap between our expectations for students and their real level of achievable linguistic proficiency.…She has encouraged us to develop the expertise necessary to take native speakers of English to new levels of linguistic competence within the classroom—by the close integration of language and literature teaching, so that, in her words, “more than native speakers or the exceptional few…make it to the upper professional levels.”
James has been affiliated with Hunter College since 1978; she served as chair of her department from 1983 to 1989, and was reappointed to the position in 1991. She was elected president of ADFL for 1990, served as the interim director of the association in 1991–92, and is currently a member of the MLA Advisory Committee on Foreign Languages and Literatures. She is the author of books on Ferdinand Raimund and Vienna and on Georg Büchner. In the ADFL Bulletin she has recently written on such issues as the reward system, the integration of language and literature at all levels of the college curriculum, and the problem of setting realistic goals in the language classroom. She continues to inspire teachers and administrators throughout the field with her dedication to the idea that cohesive language curricula extending from secondary schools through graduate programs can vitalize foreign language and literature teaching in the United States.
A Survey of Foreign Language Entrance and Degree Requirements in United States Colleges and Universities, Fall 1994
The MLA has received a grant from the United States Department of Education to conduct a survey of foreign language entrance and degree requirements in American colleges and universities during the academic year 1994–95. As in the MLA's 1987–88 study of the same topic, the survey will be sent to all United States colleges and universities, including two-year colleges, and will seek data about requirements for entrance, for bachelor's degrees, and for associate's degrees. The survey will distinguish between requirements for the BA and those for other bachelor's degrees, such as the BS or the BFA.
An MLA computer database will furnish the basic list of institutions to receive the survey. The information on degree requirements in 1987–88 and 1994–95, along with an existing MLA database of generally available statistics on size, type, and control of institution for United States colleges and universities, will form a new database on language requirements. This database will make possible longitudinal comparisons as well as analyses by such variables as size, type, control of institution, region, and state.
The 1994–95 survey report will present data on foreign language entrance and degree requirements for the BA and all other bachelor's degrees in an institutional directory arranged alphabetically by state. Supplementary directories will list institutions that have added, increased, dropped, or decreased their entrance and degree requirements since 1987–88, and another supplementary directory will list the relatively few two-year colleges that have language requirements for their degrees. Summary tables will show the prevalence of requirements by region and state, as well as by institutional characteristics, and will provide comparisons with past surveys.
The elected members of the ADFL Executive Committee will be asked to serve as advisers and evaluators of the project because they represent different types of institutions and understand the issues that affect foreign language entrance and degree requirements. MLA staff members responsible for the project are Bettina J. Huber, director of research, and Richard Brod, director of special projects.
A Coordinated Modern Language Program at the Claremont Colleges
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has since 1991 provided funding to improve programs in modern languages at the Claremont Colleges—Pomona, Scripps, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, and Pitzer Colleges and the Claremont Graduate School. The colleges have hired a foreign language coordinator, sponsored faculty development programs, and begun to consider faculty-generated projects to foster innovation in language teaching.
The coordinated program has enabled establishment of new faculty positions in Italian (at Scripps), in Japanese (at Pomona), and in Spanish and comparative literature (at Harvey Mudd); in addition, it has supported a coordinated German program that combines offerings at three of the colleges, allowing students to major in German studies. Faculty development grants have been awarded to support expanded Spanish tutorial programs at Scripps, Claremont McKenna, and Pitzer Colleges, a seminar on Cuban culture and society at Pomona College, a seminar on women in Latin America at Pitzer College, a textbook for advanced beginners of Chinese, and instructional materials in Italian, a joint project between faculty members at Scripps College and the University of Parma. A Spanish-language community outreach program involving local elementary schools has also been established.
The centerpiece of the revitalized intercollegiate language program in Claremont is the Summer Institute of Language and Culture (SILC). Long aware of the need for a local center for summer language immersion programs, the Claremont Colleges inaugurated SILC on 1 June 1994 with a program comprising elementary and intermediate classes in Spanish and Japanese. SILC is expected to grow to include immersion programs in a number of other languages. An annual part of the summer institute will be the Claremont Colleges Language Teaching Symposium, which will offer continuing education credit to regional secondary school foreign language teachers. For further information, write or call Dan Bayer, Foreign Language Coordinator, Boardwalk Bldg., Pitzer Coll., Claremont, CA 91711; 909 621-8982.
© 1994 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
ADFL Bulletin 26, no. 1 (Fall 1994): Back Matter |
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