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Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
Albert Einstein
RICHARD ZIPSER once described a sure way for “building a full-service foreign language department.” He encouraged foreign language faculties across the nation “to take a positive approach that can and will lead to positive results: Ask not what your administration and fellow department chairs can do for you—ask what you and your faculty can do for them” (31). While there are many initiatives that may or may not affect the shifting enrollment patterns, we can learn some valuable lessons from Zipser's interdisciplinary initiatives.
With the decline in French, German, and Russian enrollments on all levels in recent years, the call is out to restructure these programs to attract more students. Dwindling enrollments, particularly in German and French, were also the focus of a 1994 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education , entitled “Spanish, Si! Colleges Report Dramatic Growth in Spanish; French and German Decline.” Little has changed since 1994 vis-à-vis enrollment in German. And in many ways, the discussion section on shifting enrollment patterns at the 1997 MLA convention in Toronto brought to the fore the dire need for challenging new approaches to increase enrollments in such language as German, Russian, and French. Since my own background is in German, I focus here on ways to increase interest and enrollments in German, but the approaches apply to any language.
In our professional circles we frequently discuss ways to increase enrollments in our advanced foreign language courses, while few teachers actually learn how to market beginning courses in a college environment, courses most vital to our continued well-being, if not survival. This article suggests nine strategies to help the practitioner become more customer- and service-oriented, find a new customer base, and further an interest in foreign languages. What can we do to achieve these lofty goals?
Spend time building networks of support within our campus community. In other words, we need to expand ownership to other departments, to faculty members in other colleges, to students in the housing units, to the community that supports the university, and to the businesses that are located in our service region. If we are truly interested in working on enrollments we must be willing to extend the boundaries of our work beyond the classroom. At the very least, we must collectively formulate activities that include aspects of German language and culture into every sphere of our service region's life. But before we can do this, we must have a picture of the service region, a picture about its people, its industry, its future growth potential, and its employers.
While Zipser's article stressed becoming a full-service department within one's institution, I would like to broaden our playing field beyond the confines of the campus to the community and region to better serve the needs of the business community and the people and to develop new needs. Indeed, some colleagues may think that such goals are insignificant, even unworthy of our time, effort, and expense. Zipser stated that “such a department is not parochial, but truly oriented toward the needs of others and fully integrated into the programmatic fabric of its institution. Its members feel appreciated and respected—anything but marginalized and demoralized—for they know they are doing important work” (29). The question raised here is, How do we know what kinds of programs a foreign language department should develop? A look at data from the 1990 US Census for your region may provide you with some answers to particular questions you may have. 1
After reviewing census data, faculty members might want to purvey the German perspective, for instance, by providing beginning language courses geared toward students in other disciplines. Courses for majors in historic preservation, marketing, horticulture, and engineering might help broaden the pool of students to draw from for possible double majors. In my own experience as chair, my department has focused on developing cross-departmental collaboration and internship opportunities as a result of these census data.
Respond to and create new challenges in all spheres of the community and college environments by offering an international film series of select foreign-language films (preferably with subtitles). These films, well-advertised on and off campus, should cover a full range of topics, including social and political issues, fine arts, business, entertainment, and history to attract people from different age groups, majors, socioeconomic backgrounds, and ethnic groups. People from all walks of life, on and off campus, can begin to build a long-term relationship with your department. For example, the Department of Foreign Languages at Southeast Missouri State University offers between twenty-five and thirty international films each semester. While we do not keep records on attendance, we estimate that about one-third of the viewers are not from our language classes but from other majors and from the community.
Offer, on a regular basis, lectures with a distinct international focus. People outside the university setting, as well as colleagues from different departments and colleges within the university, often note that they do not understand the importance of our area in the overall picture or its contextual conditions. To create new alliances, foreign language departments must provide others with a knowledge of the discipline. My department developed the Travel Abroad at Home lecture series to provide understanding of various aspects of foreign languages in our daily lives ranging from travel to politics, from business to foods. Some lectures are provided in the foreign language with simultaneous interpretation to ensure that everyone can understand what is being said.
Offer international television programming via campus or community cable systems to all dormitory units and the community at large, announce their availability, and encourage the community as well as the university family (students, faculty, staff) to watch the programs. My department established free cable access to international TV from France, Germany, and Mexico. Students who do not live on campus are encouraged to check out, free of charge, taped copies of these programs from the foreign language lab. And we installed a number of television sets across campus to allow for viewing in the classroom buildings. Our department also collaborated with the department of mass communication in 1995 to launch a weekly TV talk show entitled “International Crossroads.” The show, hosted by a foreign language major and directed by students majoring in mass communication, covers topics ranging from international politics to study abroad, internships, and news.
Start affordable exchange programs—costing no more than studying at your home university—so that students consider studying abroad as a viable, financially feasible option. My department established a number of bilateral exchange programs with universities in France, Germany, and Mexico to allow our students to study abroad at virtually the same cost as studying at the home institution.
Develop a short-term study-abroad program open to students from all disciplines and provide these students with a rudimentary knowledge of the language before departure. You want to be able to provide a “taste of the country,” that is, its language and culture at a glance. These programs could be made available to the community also, especially if the number of student participants is insufficient. Our department has sponsored trips to Germany and Mexico with participants from both the university community and the region. For one two-week program in Germany, we accepted a dozen participants from the community to join the study tour. Our majors were asked to teach the community participants basic German survival skills each day, beginning with the alphabet, numbers, and basic phrases for restaurants, shopping, sight-seeing, and the like. As a result, the study tour materialized, thus providing students with an overseas experience that otherwise would have been canceled due to insufficient enrollments.
Develop community support programs that cater to our friends, alumni, and others. Such programs should help raise critically needed scholarship funds. My department started a European castle tour that invites alumni and friends to travel overseas to visit famous European castles in an effort to raise needed scholarship dollars for foreign language majors. Such experiences create good will and educate the community about the vital importance of foreign languages in all aspects of our daily lives.
Develop internships both regionally and internationally and encourage students from other departments to make use of these internships. In this regard, my department established a number of international internships for foreign language double majors in a variety of fields, such as horticulture, banking, political science, music, and marketing.
Develop courses that reach beyond the bounds of the canon. My department's most exciting programs in progress are related to the college of business and its students' need for certification in a particular language. This proposed program will offer business majors the possibility of graduating with a business major and a degree notation that reads, for instance, “Certified in German.” Our goal is to encourage business majors who traditionally did not enroll in foreign language classes to take courses that would lead to their being certified. We are especially enthusiastic about this proposed program since the business college is the second largest in our institution, with about one thousand majors.
In conclusion, I would like to state that the number of majors in our department has increased over a four-year period from about thirty (1993 fall semester) to over eighty (1997 fall semester). While it is difficult to state with certainty which particular initiatives encouraged students to enroll in our courses, reaching out to students and faculty members in other departments on campus, to the community, and to the region does plant the seeds for a renewed interest in foreign languages.
The author is Professor and Chair of Foreign Languages at Southeast Missouri State University. This article is based on his presentation at the 1997 MLA convention in Toronto, Canada.
1 Copies of the 1990 US Census or data thereof should be available in your university's library. Census information is a valuable tool for the novice and expert alike, because it provides information about such topics as cultural heritage, median income, industrial productivity, future growth areas, and many more.
Cage, Mary Crystal. “Spanish, Si! Colleges Report Dramatic Growth in Spanish; French and German Decline.” Chronicle of Higher Education 12 Oct. 1994: A15.
Zipser, Richard. “Building a Full-Service Foreign Language Department: Some Strategies and Interdisciplinary Initiatives.” ADFL Bulletin 23.3 (1992): 28–33. [Show Article]
© 1998 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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