The case for relevancy
Of the roughly 2,000 WVU students enrolled this semester in the beginning and intermediate language courses that count toward the arts-and-sciences requirement, only about half are taking a class to meet such a requirement, according to the preliminary results of a survey conducted by the world-languages department. That could suggest more-widespread interest in language study.
In a self study, the department reported that many of its students are double majors, adding a foreign language to another academic program. The university did not include second majors as part of its calculations.
Bousquet, who is a professor of French, said this is typical for many students who come to college with interest in a particular field and find that learning a language can deepen their understanding of their chosen discipline or make them more attractive in the job market. In 2015, Wisconsin created a certificate, or minor, in French to serve such students. There are now about 115 French minors, many pursuing degrees in areas like public health or international development, Bousquet said.
Purdue University offers courses, or sections of courses, that have a special focus on the vocabulary needed for particular disciplines. Professors have taught “language for a specific purpose” courses in fields such as engineering, business, and medicine, said Jen William, a professor of German and head of the university’s school of languages and cultures.
William and her colleagues have worked to make it easier for students to fit language study into their schedules, especially those in science and engineering, who often have highly regimented courses of study. One way has been to develop special study-abroad programs, which marry academic coursework, intensive language study, and hands-on experience in their fields. “We’ve built strong partnerships,” especially with engineering, William said.
Forging such connections across a university can help make the case for relevancy. At the University of Kansas, the department of East Asian languages and cultures has worked with the study-abroad office to create a program to send 10 Korean-language students to teach English in South Korea each summer, while alumni groups support scholarships for such study. At Kansas, where much of the interest in Korean-language study is driven by an interest in culture, such as K-pop, enrollments in Korean classes have nearly doubled over the past decade.
The University of Oklahoma’s department of modern languages, literature, and linguistics has revised its curriculum to include more cultural-studies courses that meet student interest, most recently in Chinese and Italian. At Wisconsin, Bousquet teaches a popular course on Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, the international-aid group, that counts as an elective for its global-health program as well as for French and humanities majors. Only about a quarter of the students in the course, which is taught in English, typically have a French-language background, Bousquet estimated, but each term several go on to take French or study abroad in a Francophone country.
But are such efforts enough to stave off cuts to foreign-language programs? West Virginia’s foreign-language faculty members also sought to innovate and strike partnerships, offering language courses geared for students in engineering and medicine, moving more classes online even before the pandemic, and winning a national grant to create programming to send first-generation and other underrepresented students abroad. They even tried to establish a dual-degree program between German and engineering, but it was derailed by bureaucratic complications, said Amy Thompson, the chair of the world-languages department.
“In the end,” Thompson said of the proposed cuts, which the department is appealing, “what I’m really worried about is how they will affect our students.”
