By JENNIFER GANTT ABSHE
The College of Humanities is happy with the Strategic Planning/Self-Study Committee’s comments about their department in general but feel that some important issues still need to be addressed.
“We talked about the Summer Language Institute that was suggested in the Self-Study and we reacted positively to it,” said Randall L. Jones, dean of College of Humanities. “The suggestion was to enlarge it and open it to undergraduate studies and we made a very strong case for the growth of the program.”
Some of the major recommendations made by the Self-Study for the College of Humanities include creating a new department within the college, allotting more money to enhance the Reading/Writing Center for foreign languages, and changing the current Summer Language Institute program to include students.
The new department would be created by separating the humanities and comparative literature disciplines from the classics discipline, and merging them with art history, from the visual arts department.
“The first thing we talked about in the response is the fact that we didn’t think that they addressed our need for space sufficiently,” Jones said. “We think that they need to build a new building for our college.”
The study agreed with the department’s suggestion for a Ph.D. program for Applied Linguistics, Jones said; “They approved it but with only one FTE (full-time employee equivalent) and we felt we should have two and not just one.”
The Self-Study committee also recommended a base change in the college budget that would allot $45,000 for the current computer foreign language classroom and $80,000 for a second computer classroom.
Jones said these recommendations are a major step forward.
Jones also pointed out the change the committee recommended in the Summer Language Institute is that it should also allow students to benefit from the program.
Concerning the Summer Language Institute, the study states:
“The second idea was the creation of a Summer Language Institute that would offer courses in a wide array of languages designed specifically to solidify the language abilities for those who have returned from missions or who have had other, comparable, foreign language experiences, but who do not intend to major or minor in a language or who have language skills in one of the less commonly taught languages.
“With regard to the less commonly taught languages in particular, it would probably be easier to bring specialists in these languages to a two-month intensive program and to attract a critical mass of students once a year (or as often in a summer program as warranted) than to try to offer courses in these languages as part of the university’s regular curriculum. It may also be the case that students who could not otherwise take time from their studies at the university and who do not intend to pursue a minor or major in a language could give the time to an intensive program taught in the summer to solidify their language skills.”
