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JUST say the words “We're thinking about putting together a new graduate program” to your dean, are coordinator, or vice president for instruction. Wait a moment for the utterance to register. Then, be prepared to listen to the all-too-familiar litany of responses: “These days, we must focus our diminishing resources on undergraduate education.” “You know, your department will not get any new hires in the foreseeable future.” “With language enrollments going down, the chancellor is certainly not going to fund expansion proposals.”
All these responses have an obvious common theme. In higher education, as in almost every other enterprise in the 1990s and for some decades to come, the message of those distributing our resources is, “You must do more with less.” At a time when, at an ever-increasing rate, public funding is shifting from higher education to human services and criminal justice 1 we in colleges and universities must heed this message and act accordingly, simply to hold our ground 2 .
Faculty members and administrators in departments of foreign languages may well wonder how and if we can ever enact new ideas and proposals within such fiscal constraints. Even in the best of circumstances, we, long with our colleagues in other humanities disciplines, have often felt that we were not accorded our fair share of the available resources. Are good initiatives and programs likely to become even more unrealizable these days? Will creative faculty members be unable to pursue new directions? Obviously not, if they use at least a portion of their creativity and energy to solve the problem created by diminished resources. One foreign language department is applying just such an effort to do more with less in the development of a new graduate program.
In 1993 at Florida State University, designed a research I institution by the Carnegie Foundation and one of ten schools in the Florida state university system, faculty members in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistic began to review their graduate programs. The department offers the MA degree in French, German, Slavic languages, and Spanish as well as the PhD in French and Spanish. In addition, through the Humanities Program, students can pursue PhDs in German, Italian, and Russian. All these programs involve study and research leading to the preparation of a thesis or dissertation focusing on literary criticism.
The 1993 program yielded some thought-provoking results, which led to the development of a supplemental graduate track, designed not to replace existing programs but to provide an additional choice for graduate studies. Although enrollments in the MA and PhD programs had grown significantly during the previous five to eight years, completion rates were down (especially among PhD students). Fewer and fewer ABDs and PhD recipients were able to identify teaching positions in their fields, much less receive interviews or job offers. Many students, observing their peers' struggles, simply delayed completing their degrees. When questioned about their career goals, many said they wanted to teach foreign languages at the postsecondary level but were not sure they could find positions since their preparation was in literary criticism.
At the same time, other job candidates were discovering that a good number of institutions were seeking applicants with greater breadth of training and experience than our students had. A review of position openings in the MLA Job Information List and notices at professional meetings, as well as discussions with colleagues at various colleges and universities, revealed that the desired breadth was, more often than not, in college-level second language acquisition and instruction. Frequently, a job announcement for, say, a French seventeenth-century specialist might also include “primary responsibility for directing lower-division language programs; supervision of adjuncts; knowledge of computer-assisted language instruction; departmental representative to college's liberal studies curriculum committee.” Clearly, departments are looking for candidates who can do it all.
Thus, to enhance our students' chances of securing college teaching positions and to respond to students' expressed needs, the faculty agreed to explore the development of a new graduate track that would combine many of the elements of a traditional program with a strong foundation in college-level second-language teaching and related disciplines. This expansion would demonstrate to employers that our graduates would make flexible faculty members who could meet the broader needs departments have expressed—they could, for example, teach advanced literature courses for majors, participate in language-across-the-curriculum programs, serve as departmental advisers to students preparing for teacher certification, and so on. With this goal of expansion in mind, our faculty set to work to plan a new track.
Our new graduate track thus leads to a specialization in postsecondary second-language pedagogy. A half dozen or so foreign language graduate programs across the country have recently developed second language acquisition and teaching tracks, in response to forces influencing curricular development in higher education. 3
Public scrutiny of the quality (and quantity) of teaching has increased dramatically and vociferously in the last five to ten years. Citing such oft-quoted exposés as Charles J. Sykes's Profscam , our critics have told us that we are obviously not interested in teaching and that the little teaching we do is not very good. We have handed over undergraduate instruction to inexperienced and untrained teaching assistants and adjuncts, they say, while we pursue the glories of scholarly research. The public now demands that higher education faculty members “return” to teaching and be held accountable for high-quality instruction. Those who do not pass muster must be taught to teach well. 4
We must agree at least in part with our critics. In particular, we in PhD-granting departments must understand that the doctoral student who has just written yet another “definitive” study on the authorship of Rabelais's fifth book or who has looked at one more Chilean poet's work through the lens of feminist critical theory has likely not been prepared to teach these topics even if there were an academic position available in his or her specific field. Thus several PhD-granting programs, and literature faculty members in the theories and practices of second-language teaching and to the reality of training our doctoral students for the broader, multidimensional teaching careers of the next generations in higher education, have led the way in offering new graduate program choices.
Ever mindful of financial constraints and seeking to create a program in second-language teaching while retaining literature-based studies intact, our modern languages and linguistics faculty developed a plan for curricular change requiring relatively little new investment from the university. The faculty members involved in planning knew that almost any new graduate program proposed in the present climate was likely to be approved only if it used existing university resources (our classics department's proposal for a new PhD program—sweetened even by the gift of a million-dollar endowed chair—still sits unapproved in the Board of Regents' office). Thus the curricular development plan included several key steps:
When a faculty member in Spanish retired, the department made a strong case to the dean that any replacement should have training in higher education pedagogy. After a year we hired a candidate with dual preparation in Spanish and college-level curriculum and instruction. This faculty member, charged with teaching a variety of undergraduate Spanish courses and supervising the teaching assistants, became a key part of the new graduate-program-development teams.
Faculty members next inquired at all the programs across the country offering MA- or PhD-level concentrations in second language acquisition and teaching. Some of these programs are based in a college of education; others are interdisciplinary. Still others stand alone within language and linguistics departments. Consultation with program directors and other colleagues at these institutions provided needed guidance about program development, possible problems, and likely solutions. These colleagues offered to serve as continuing resources to help us avoid reinventing the wheel. They also told us what kinds of positions their recent graduates had obtained (director of undergraduate languages, teaching assistant supervisor, coordinator of foreign language education majors, state department of education staff member) and encouraged us to move forward with the plan.
The program-development committee next reviewed all second-language-teaching program descriptions, including admission standards, content of courses, distribution of required and elective hours, examinations, and other degree requirements. The common features included
Committee members were particularly attentive to course descriptions and requirements, keeping in mind our faculty members' expertise and interests.
The next step was to identify faculty members and programs across campus that would likely contribute to a second language acquisition and teaching track. Our development team brought preliminary proposals to faculty members and program administrators from departments throughout the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Eduction: anthropology, educational foundations and policies, higher education, multilingual and multicultural education, psychology, statistics, and testing and evaluation. Every faculty member asked agreed enthusiastically to accept modern language students in his or her courses, to provide research opportunities, and to serve on thesis and dissertation committees. Perhaps because the initial number of additional students was small or because these particular faculty members are committed to interdisciplinary education, we encountered no obstacles in bringing together the cooperating faculty members. The proposed curriculum began to take shape as each collaborating unit identified its contribution. One faculty member, in higher education, agreed to design a section of his discipline's foundation course that would emphasize humanities. Another faculty member, in psychology, whose graduate training includes a master's in comparative literature, proposed a new course in psychology of language that would bring together many strands of psycholinguistics research in second language acquisition.
The final step in the collaborative development process is ongoing: bringing interested and adept modern languages and linguistics faculty members up-to-date in second language acquisition and teaching. One faculty member, whose training included a master's degree in education, is already immersing herself in present-day second-language research and attending conferences and workshops in the discipline. Another colleague, whose expertise in pedagogical applications of linguistics has been of limited availability to students, is developing an entry-level course that will be a core requirement in the new program. Several other faculty members have expressed considerable interest. They will be encouraged to support graduate students' work (e.g., by offering their courses as research settings) and program-specific activities (guest speakers, graduate student professional travel, etc.). Any recruiting of faculty members will include at least a discussion of candidates' interests and expertise in second language acquisition and teaching.
This collaborative program—still a work in progress—has accepted its first two doctoral students, with two more set to enter within a few months. We will monitor the progress of these first students closely; they will serve as de facto members of the curricular development team. Their experience in core and elective courses as well as their evaluations of faculty members' contributions to their training will be incorporated into further curriculum development. The rest of the students in the department remain fully engaged in a literature-based program. Some of these students, however, may wish to take an elective course or two from the new track to sample the curriculum and to encounter faculty members from other departments.
This kind of successful collaboration among colleagues from different departments in developing new graduate programs is precisely what higher education needs at a time when reduced funding may discourage faculty members from pursuing initiatives. To be sure, this particular new program does have a cost. A faculty member teaching a course in this track is not available to teach elsewhere. Faculty members and students in the program will require space and material resources to conduct research, and they will need travel funds to present their findings at professional meetings. Faculty members in the collaborating departments will teach larger classes as new students from outside their disciplines enroll. Some of the cost is, of course, simply shifted from one internal program to another. Other costs would be funded by enrollment growth in the program if it is successful. All in all, the cost is relatively modest.
The development of this new graduate program amid severe fiscal constraints may serve other departments as a model of collaboration. The particular elements of this process are straightforward:
Through similar collaborative efforts, faculty members and administrators in many departments of foreign languages may further their curricular goals even at a time when it seems almost impossible to do so.
The author is Associate Professor of French and Associate Chair of Graduate Studies in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics at Florida State University.
1 The American Council on Education determined that the portion of state budgets spent on higher education has been shrinking since 1980 as more funds have been devoted to health care and prisons. Specifically, the amount of state revenues spent on colleges fell from 11.3% in 1980 to 9.2% in 1992 (Kelly).
2 In Florida, the percentage of state general-revenue spending on education has declined dramatically in the last ten years. In 1985, 62% of state spending was devoted to education. By 1995, that percentage had fallen to 50%.
3 Among the institutions with the most extensively developed programs are: the University of Arizona; the University of Illinois, Urban; Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Indiana University, Bloomington; the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and the University of Texas, Austin.
4 In 1994 the Florida legislature considered a bill requiring all public university faculty members to give evidence of successful completion of a teacher preparation course.
“A Decade of Disinvesting in Schools.” Tallahassee Democrat 3 May 1995: 12A.
Kelly, Dennis. “Colleges Get Smaller Slice of State's Pies.” USA Today 24 Apr. 1995: D1.
Sykes, Charles J. Profscam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education. Washington: Regnery Gateway, 1988.
© 1996 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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