30, no. 2 (Winter 1999): 1-3
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
No Works Cited |
|
From the Editor
Elizabeth B. Welles
ON THE 1998 ADFL seminar registration form participants were asked to identify the two or three most important issues facing their departments and the profession. Since only three short lines were allowed, these responses can perhaps be taken as the gut reactions of department chairs, specifically of chairs about to attend a meeting of peers where they would expect such matters to be discussed. Of the nearly 200 administrators who attended the seminars, about 130 responded, which is about 13% of all ADFL member chairs and about 4% of all department chairs. In spite of the small size of the sample, these texts mirror what the field thinks is important and how foreign language educators see themselves in relation to higher education in the United States today.
The largest category of concerns facing departments was, not surprisingly, the decline or the growth, according to the language, of student enrollments with attendant worries about reduced resources, staffing—particularly the increased reliance on part-time faculty members—and the maintenance of language programs with small or dwindling numbers of students. Connected to enrollment ills were the recruitment of students, the overpopulation of first-year courses, and further up the educational ladder, the retention of students in upper-level courses and the major. Since enrollments are the most visible sign of department status, many registrants also said that the place of foreign languages on the campus was the next most important issue for departments. Comments in this category were couched in terms of “marginalization” and “isolation” from mainstream activities and the need for departments to be better positioned to deal with institutional preoccupations. It was encouraging to see that so many participants responded energetically to the enrollment dilemma by thinking about what one person called “redesigning courses with today's students in mind,” which means new majors, new courses, languages across the curriculum, interdisciplinarity, and better assessment measures. As modernization of teaching and curriculum in response to student, university, and market needs emerged as a theme, mention of technology came up in tandem. One person summed up some of the tensions surrounding the uses of and support for technology in the classroom with the response “pedagogically effective uses of technology versus the administrative view of technology as a cost-saving device.” I was surprised, however, that only about fifteen respondents mentioned technology as an issue since in seminar evaluations participants routinely say they want more information about and practice with all aspects of virtual language teaching. I suspect that evaluations offer more chance for reflection and, coming after the seminar, may represent a collective sense of doubt about mastery of the assorted media.
The enumeration of concerns facing the profession was parallel but broader. First of all, “the profession” was interpreted variously as the field of foreign language and literature teaching, as all teaching in the humanities, or as all of higher education. While many respondents mentioned enrollments again, the greatest number of comments were clustered around what other people think about foreign language education, that is, the value—or lack of value—of foreign languages within a liberal education, the place of languages and language departments in the campus mainstream, and the credibility of the profession with the public. These impressions were often negative, like “decreased sense of need for foreign language study among students and colleagues” and “lack of public support for humanities and foreign languages in particular,” but were often followed more positively by suggested directions that the profession might take, such as reconfiguration of the discipline with a willingness to adapt to student demographics and motivations. As one person said, “What does the market need, as opposed to what we have been giving students.” While some responses recommended forming connections with international and business and other non-foreign language studies, at least twenty of our colleagues were concerned about the loss of student interest in literature, and others noted the difficulty of reconciling the aims of teaching languages to enhance liberal education with the more pragmatic goals of proficiency for business and careers. One person warned against the “‘Berlitizification’ of foreign language and literature or civilization study at the college level.” As a kind of corollary, most decried the drift in higher education toward a business model or, as one person put it, the move “from monastery to corporation.”
One's image, the view from the other, is difficult to document. An incident from my experience can serve as a modest example. Several months ago I was introduced as the director of foreign language programs to a distinguished academic visitor to the MLA office. “Oh,” said the visitor, “you certainly have your hands full.” An ambiguous remark, to say the least. How do we represent ourselves to the public, to institutional administrators, to colleagues in other departments, and to students? As the comments on the seminar registrations show, our “image problem” is very much caught up in the changing motivations and purposes that languages are thought to serve. Can we be both in the core of a liberal arts education and a practical part of career preparation? We used to think that studying the liberal arts was career preparation, but that no longer seems true. The really important image question lies at the heart of the primary concern of the seminar attendees: student enrollments. Do we convey to students the importance of learning languages for both their educational and their career goals? Does the exotic and foreign nature of languages and cultures other than English give students a sense of excitement and adventure? Do students see a savvy department at the forefront of curricular innovation and the uses of technology, a department at the center of leadership in international and cross-cultural studies? Does the department seem crucial to the priorities of the institution?
Several of the seminar papers published here explore the image problem to figure out not what the image is so much as how departments themselves can shape and control the perception about languages and those who teach them. Carmen Tesser discusses how chairs can adapt psychological research about decision making to help carve out a central place for departments in the changing and increasingly international campus. David Foster, in his role as chair of languages and literatures at Arizona State, promotes linguistic and cultural awareness throughout the campus and the community. He points out that, by taking advantage of surrounding Hispanic culture, the university goes beyond the usual academic purview to integrate its programs into the social and cultural concerns of the community. Foster also suggests that faculty members of all languages may gain a wider audience by teaching courses in film, in women's studies, or in the culture of their expertise that will attract students from many disciplines. As Foster says, “One way of making languages and literatures programs indispensable to the university community [is] to go outside of one's own department and to cultivate ways of teaching for other departments.” Mark Roche offers a rich array of strategies for making foreign language departments visible in the intellectual life of the campus and for highlighting the value of language study (here, German) to the campus. He suggests publicizing the accomplishments of the department while becoming a model for departmental administration and leadership. He believes that forming alliances with, for example, high schools, other disciplines, professional schools, and the community will strengthen programs and give them visibility in many constituencies.
Linda von Hoene finds that language departments have a natural niche in undergraduate and graduate programs. She argues that the “process of cross-cultural travel and the conscious explorations of how we respond to difference […] constitute one of the unique and most fundamental contributions that departments of foreign languages and literatures can potentially make to higher education.” In her article she discusses the implementation and implications of this contribution in three sites, the foreign language classroom, the study abroad experience, and the graduate seminar in literature and culture. Tracy Sharpley-Whiting provides a case in point, drawing attention to francophone studies, which “with its multiple cultures intersecting with race and linked by a common language” is usually interpreted too simply as fulfilling a need for cultural diversity. She believes, however, that francophonia requires an intercultural examination of French culture in the context of the cross-cultural, a study that could best be undertaken through an interdisciplinary alliance of the French department and African studies. She further suggests that such an alliance can increase student and course diversity, increase departmental visibility, and provide a vibrant intellectual resource.
This issue includes brief but noteworthy descriptions providing multiple images of the wide variety of structures and emphases that exist in departments today. Richard Wood expands on the theme of the liberal arts, competency, and career, pointing out that curricula beyond the introductory level should not focus exclusively on literature, nor should they focus on business language or other professional orientations to the neglect of literature and high culture. He advises that language programs could be more effective if they were connected with other disciplines, if they built on students' academic and professional interests, and if they took an ethnographical approach to study abroad. For Jean Perkins, “The center of attention should be on the foreign language departments involved in the training of teachers […]. If the college or university departments […] are alive and well, there is more chance that they will be producing well-prepared and committed teachers at the lower levels.” She describes three programs that integrate teacher education with other parts of the curriculum, at the University of Delaware, the consortium of Bryn Mawr and Haverford, and Swarthmore. Jacquelyn Green and Stephen Mittelstet present snapshots of the remarkably wide-ranging programs at two community colleges, City College of San Francisco and Richland College of the Dallas Community College District. Peter Hoff and Mary Pinkerton reveal the anxiety as well as the advantages of a merger between the English and foreign language departments at their university, a timely essay since we have received several requests for information about such arrangements.
The papers by Zita Dabars, John Mohan, and Elizabeth Neatrour honor Dan Davidson, the winner of the ADFL Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession, by demonstrating the profound influence Davidson has had on Russian studies today. Through his work in pedagogy, materials development, study abroad, mentoring of young teacher-scholars in the field, and advocacy of Russian and foreign language programs before government bodies he has done much to shape both the substance and the image of the field. While the fluctuating popularity of studying Russian seems to reflect our country's foreign relations, the writers recommend further curricular reform with a focus on the learner and greater access to materials on the Internet to guard against the precipitous ups and downs in enrollment.
And, last, I would like to draw your attention to the “Final Report of the Committee on Professional Employment,” which deals broadly and deeply with the system of graduate education and the professional options of PhDs in modern languages. This study, along with a guide for self-evaluation of doctoral programs, was sent to MLA members in the spring, but believing that ADFL members should have access to such a significant document, we publish it here. You will also find it on the MLA Web site (www.mla.org). I began this column by citing the reactions of ADFL seminar participants to a query about the most important issues before departments. As I found out, these responses turned on concerns about the place of foreign languages in American education and society. While the CPE report is about the continuum from graduate school to undergraduate education in modern languages, it is really a synecdoche for all of higher education; that is, it includes issues at stake for all departments and disciplines. We hope it will be used to retrieve and burnish the image of all of higher education.
© 1999 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
ADFL Bulletin 30, no. 2 (Winter 1999): 1-3 |
|
|---|
|
|
|
|
No Works Cited |
|
