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INCREASING economic globalization and rapidly changing North American demographics have radically expanded the community boundaries of the community college to serve an enrollment from all over the world. To address the contemporary language acquisition of this increasingly diverse student body, Richland College, of the Dallas County Community College District in Texas, has created a division of world languages.
The need to create this division emerged from our understanding of the various reasons that today's students study languages. In addition to, and frequently instead of, studying language for the more traditional purposes of broadening one's knowledge, expanding one's worldview, challenging one's intellect, exploring literature in various languages, and attaining a liberal arts degree, most of Richland's students study languages for more immediately utilitarian reasons. In our rapidly expanding world society, many students coming from, or preparing for entry into, business and industry need to obtain the oral, written, and cultural skills necessary to communicate with the diverse clientele of the global workplace. The ability to communicate in foreign boardrooms, foreign factories, and global industries often requires practical application of language skills and cultural sensitivity. Conversely, the ability to speak and understand the languages of newly arrived immigrants entering local industries, computer plants, hospitals, governmental agencies, and elementary and secondary schools also requires relevant language application skills. Consequently, whether native English speakers need to communicate in other languages or non, English speakers need to communicate in English, the language-acquisition needs of today's students are vast and varied yet inherently similar.
North American colleges and universities have long educated international students who have traveled to the United States and Canada to study English and obtain a liberal arts degree, returning afterward to live and work in their countries. Increasingly, the language-acquisition needs of an escalating flow of immigrants go beyond academic survival English to include the acculturation and accent-reduction skills necessary to succeed in the workplaces of the adopted homeland. As Richland College's president I have realized, as have our academic leaders and faculty members, that the methods of many traditional liberal arts schools do not address the myriad language-acquisition needs in the greater Dallas community. We have committed augmented resources to serve this changing educational market.
Compelling statistics substantiate the need for a college division devoted to the realm of language acquisition. Today 14% of the population in the United States speaks a language other than English, compared to 11% in the 1980s. Figures from the Associated Press indicate that as of 1990 there were fifty-one United States cities with populations of 100,000 or more whose racial and ethnic minorities counted together formed a majority of each city's population (“Minority Groups” 11A, 12A). More specifically, the American Council on Education released figures in 1992 on the expanding cultural diversity of students attending United States colleges and universities. The figures represent a 13.4% increase in the number of foreign students and further indicate that from 1980 to 1990 the number of Asian or Pacific Islanders increased by 94%, while the number of Hispanic students increased by 61%. There were 30% more nonresident alien students and 23% more American Indian or Alaskan Native students. These diverse student populations bring other cultures and languages to our country and out campuses and require responsive colleges and universities to provide an array of language-acquisition opportunities for our students.
The changing face of Richland's student population mirrors the trends in these statistics. The college serves approximately 14,000 college credit students and 12,000 noncredit students each fall and spring semester, with 14.1% of the students being African American; 56.3%, Anglo; 14%, Asian or Asian American; 10.8%, Hispanic or Latino; 0.4%, Native American; and 4.6%, nonresident alien or foreign national. English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) enrollment grew from 2,480 students in 1997 to 3,422 students in 1998, with the number of international (F-1 visa) students escalating by 41.35%, while the enrollments in the other language classes declined slightly (1.8%). It is for these compelling demographic reasons that Richland College created its Division of World Languages, combining foreign languages and ESOL (both college credit and noncredit), international student advising, and specially designed language training for business and industry all in the same division. In this division, ESOL is taught not as remedial instruction but as other languages are taught. This new division also links Richland language faculty members with Richland's Economic Development Division to tailor specialized programs in various languages to the specific needs of individual businesses in the area.
Richland College offers credit classes in Chinese, ESOL, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish, in addition to noncredit classes in Arabic, ESOL, Farsi, Italian, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. The first step in determining the fiscal and personnel commitment necessary to mold and shape this new division was to acknowledge the rapidly growing market of language learners and the effect that this market is having on the community, the country, and the economy. The division staff includes a dean; a division secretary; five full-time and fifty-two adjunct ESOL faculty members, with eight instructional support people assisting them; and six full-time and seventeen adjunct foreign language faculty members who teach Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. In support of the new division, the college leadership made available released time and funds for instructional development grants and provided the fees necessary to obtain Oral Proficiency Interview/ACTFL certification. The division has a thirty-station Sony language lab that is currently being updated with computer software for interactive language study. The new software includes a placement component that enables instructors to place students in appropriate levels of foreign language instruction. ESOL technology needs are being met with a fully equipped Ellis lab, including Weaver software that provides for interactive English instruction in oral and reading skills. In the past the college has maintained two separate labs with two coordinators, one for ESOL instruction and one for foreign language instruction. With the inception of the new division, a new three-story building will provide a common lab with collaborative materials to support both ESOL and foreign language instruction.
The world languages division comprises a variety of other programs as well. To serve foreign students and immigrant students, the division oversees the Multicultural Center, which provides academic advising and counseling for students for whom English is not a native language. The center serves both credit and noncredit international and ESOL Students, acknowledging the growing need for seamless delivery of credit and noncredit instruction. The center has also joined Richland's emeritus program in providing the Conversation Partners program, which pairs trained English-speaking senior citizens and Richland employees with ESOL students. The Multicultural Center is staffed with two international student specialists, four full-time advisers, one part-time instructional associate, and one full-time faculty counselor.
The American English and Culture Institute of the Dallas County Community College District is a new program in the world languages division. Situated at a satellite location in downtown Dallas, the institute operates in collaboration with El Centro College, a sister college in the Dallas district, and provides six-level fast-track language immersion instruction of international (F-1 visa) students for all seven of the district's colleges. This institute is overseen by one full-time ESOL faculty member, assisted by five full-time instructional specialists, three instructional associates for tutoring and lab assistance, and an operational director and student services director for managing the institute.
The Special Projects program initiates language-acquisition partnerships with universities and Spanish-speaking organizations and businesses in the community and establishes certification programs for Spanish proficiency in international industry. One director and one teaching administrator market these language programs in the community and teach off campus at on-site locations in Richland's service area.
To meet the fiscal and personnel commitment necessary to ensure the success of the new world languages division, I have also encouraged innovative programs and collaborations with other institutions. The ESOL On-Site program, the Business Language in the Americas program, the Spanish for Medical Personnel program, the Spanish for Police Departments program, and the Chinese Exchange program with El Centro College have been established to expand the college's language-acquisition outreach and to generate revenue to support the division's expanded mission.
Richland is currently planning a language exchange consortium with three other schools—Brookhaven College, another sister college; North Harris Montgomery County College near Houston, Texas; and St. Petersburg junior College in Florida—to partner with Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic. The four United States community colleges will provide Spanish immersion experiences in the Dominican Republic for their students while providing English immersion experiences in the United States for students from the Dominican Republic university.
Educational partnerships also have been initiated between Richland's Division of World Languages and local independent school districts in Richland's service area. These programs provide on-site teaching of conversational Spanish for college credit to elementary and secondary school teachers, instruction for elementary and secondary school teachers in how to teach Spanish to third-grade students, and simultaneous Japanese instruction in three high schools via a remote teaching studio on the Richland campus. In further conjunction with public schools, Richland partners with El Centro College in providing bilingual teacher aide training for the Dallas Public Schools. Additionally, Richland's Spanish faculty, under special contract with the University of Texas, Dallas, offers Spanish instruction on the university's campus, only a few miles from the Richland campus. In a study-abroad collaboration with North Lake College, yet another sister campus, Richland provides Italian language instruction for the program in Rome each spring. In another El Centro–Richland collaboration, a Richland faculty member is in China this semester teaching thirty Chinese businesspeople who will then enter the American English and Cultural Institute next spring.
Market research conducted by the college has indicated that many local telecommunications businesses in the North Central Texas Telecom Corridor surrounding the campus are expanding trade options with a number of Latin American countries. The Special Projects component of the world languages division provides intensive language and cultural training at on-site corporate business locations and in campus classrooms. After completing the program, individuals are awarded certificates confirming that they have successfully learned the requisite language, culture, and business practices at various proficiency levels necessary to conduct trade and business in Latin American countries. Richland also offers French language instruction at corporations such as Alcatel and Northern Telecom and Spanish and ESOL classes at Texas Instruments. Finally, in addressing the increasing language-acquisition needs in local health care and criminal justice agencies, Richland provides both credit and noncredit instruction for medical personnel at Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas and for police personnel for the city of Garland, Texas.
Richland's language faculty members and college administration firmly believe that changing demographics, shifts in enrollment, and the globalization of the economy are compelling affirmations for the fiscal and personnel decisions made to create this new world languages division.
The author is President of Richland College, TX. This article is based on his presentation at the 1997 MLA convention in Toronto, Ontario.
American Council on Education. “Asian, Hispanic College Enrollment Increases.” Higher Education and National Affairs 12 Mar. 1992.
“Minority Groups Become Majority in Twenty-Two Large Cities.” Dallas Morning News 18 Sept. 1991: 1A+.
© 1999 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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