A Wide World of Human Choice (original) (raw)
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Motivation of Ethnically Diverse College Students to Pursue a Spanish Minor
Proceedings of the 5th International Colloquium on Languages, Cultures, Identity in School and Society , 2019
This college minor, developed and implemented in 2016, has grown to over 120 students in two years. At a time when enrollments in modern languages are declining in the United States, it is important to study and share information with the field about successful programs to inspire innovation and duplication. An online survey was administered to students enrolled in the minor in Fall, 2018. An analysis of the results is provided, along with a program description and recommendations for the future.
Language Study at Wesleyan Holds Strong, Bucking Trend of National Declines
The Wesleyan Connection, 2019
This article (for the original url with live internal links, scroll to the end below) was prompted by two concerns, one bearing on Wesleyan University (my home campus) and the other on the long-term decline in modern-language and humanities enrollments in American universities. Even though the Romance Languages & Literatures department at Wesleyan had bucked those trends (French and Italian doubling the number of majors and Spanish tripling them at some point in the previous 20 years) the curricular principles and structuring of majors that underpinned the department's anomalous success were not well-known at Wesleyan. And they could clearly serve other modern-language departments across the country struggling with declining enrollments and majors. We were not visible sometimes even in first-year orientation materials or virtual-campus tours and were not being used in university recruitment or capital campaigns even though 30% of our majors were also STEM majors. This development was driven in part by medical (and other professional and graduate) schools as well as corporate employers, which have documented for decades the exceptional performance and adaptability of liberal arts graduates in comparison to their business or technical peers. This normalized double-major trend with STEM students has provided Wesleyan a distinctive advantage with respect to larger rivals (notably, the private and public Ivies) that will always be able to count on far greater laboratory resources. The last straw was to learn that some senior administrators thought tenure-track professors in the language departments did not want to teach language, even though virtually all courses at all levels in Spanish were taught in Spanish as well as most courses in French and Italian. Because course descriptions are published in English, perhaps the key explanation for our success had effectively been rendered invisible even on our own campus: the systematic and explicit integration of language, literature, and culture from the first day of the elementary level to the most advanced seminar. This commitment was our way around the self-defeating tendency to pit literature against culture and to consider language instruction over after the fourth semester——as if it weren’t the deepest human attribute even native speakers never altogether master. We treat film like theater, with their visual and performance dimensions, as another genre of literature; and literature, since it is about everything, as the original “interdisciplinary” subject. Students (once they get to know us) love the personal—interpretive and creative—side of the subject, the small classes, the close working relation with professors, and the intensive attention to writing and public speaking——with the liberating bonus of learning to think through another language. Having grown up with digital devices, undergraduates recognize their limitations——their tendency to isolate and turn us into over-stimulated lab rats. They hunger for face-to-face engagement, for immersion, and for making things. Great literature, especially if students are learning another language while studying it and then going abroad, provides mind-blowing inspiration for their own creativity——even just as readers. Trapped in the media-saturated eternal and often dizzyingly banal present, they respond to the surprising (for them) resourcefulness and heterogeneity of the past. It reminds them the future, starting with tomorrow, will be different. That the way things are is not part of the divine and natural order. And possibly, if we work imaginatively, that they can be better. The humanities, if taught with a broad, long view, spark the imagination of students no matter what their primary intellectual or professional interests. Consistent, programmed outreach and recruitment, including the presence of all tenure-track faculty in the fifth-semester Spanish 221 course (the first course that counts toward the major and a crucial occasion to hook students and show them we're not ogres or bent on turning them into narrow specialists, the closest we come to a methods course), has been another key factor with equivalent solutions in our French and Italian sections. A third factor has been tight-knit integration of our majors with study abroad programs that focus on direct-enrollment curricula (meaning courses primarily with local native speakers rather than Americans), among them Wesleyan’s own programs in Madrid, Paris, and Bologna and our formal exchange arrangement with the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá. The dean of the arts & humanities (Nicole Stanton, subsequently appointed university provost) and the interim university provost (Robert Rosenthal) at the time thought the story ought to be told and encouraged me to share it with the university's online periodical, The Wesleyan Connection. Lauren Rubenstein, who wrote the piece, later told me it was the second-most shared article in The Wesleyan Connection's history. This was an especially gratifying, because unexpected, result. Against the doomsayers, it proved to what extent there is deep interest in modern languages and the humanities and a desire to promote them as an intellectual and professional opportunity for all students (for instance, through double-majoring) rather than a sinking ship. It showed that American isolationism and monoglotism, the assumption that English is Enough being a form of rarely acknowledged cultural imperialism on American campuses, need not be accepted blindly as part of the natural and divine order. It also shows that we can reverse the slide in languages and the humanities by raising rather than lowering standards. This prompted the request from the Zippia career site (see the following item) for professional advice to modern-language graduates, which was offered in the same unapologetic and hopeful spirit. A final factor in Wesleyan’s unfortunately unusual success: faced with the systemic invisibility of the language departments and our study abroad programs in advising and orientation materials and campus tours, a collective of up to 50 faculty members at Wesleyan now meets and works regularly with the Fries Global Studies Center to ensure deep study in another language is presented as an opportunity for all students in advising, orientation, admissions, and curricular and fund-raising plans. Since deans and other administrators routinely rotate out of positions and, with them, our hard-earned gains in visibility where it counts (course enrollments and majors), we have recognized the need for collective vigilance, tracking, and outreach to faculty, students, and administrators. Here is the article with live internal links: https://newsletter.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2019/11/15/language-study-at-wesleyan-holds-strong-bucking-trend-of-national-declines/
This reflection tells the story of how two Spanish programs adapted curricula to facilitate students’ engagement with a changed regional context, in which a surge in Latino residents in the southeastern United States has presented both opportunities and challenges for the small-town communities of which our liberal arts colleges form a part. In an effort have students engage in global learning close to campus, we grounded our principle innovation, a community-based learning course, in pre-existing “bright spots” in our respective institutions, principally, their service missions and the investments made by our colleagues and institutional leadership in international education in programs abroad. In effect, we saw the community-based learning courses we each designed as an opportunity to integrate engaged, global learning more longitudinally into the Spanish curriculum and to respond to a need brought to us by members of the community with which we wished our campus constituents to interact.
F Nuessel=Curricular Changes for Spanish and Portuguese in a New Era The College and University
Hispania. Vol. 93, No. 1. Pp. 119-122. , 2010
This article uses two MLA reports on curricular reform as a point of departure to discuss curricular changes in Spanish and Portuguese: "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World" (2007) and "Report not the Teagle Foundation on the Undergraduate Major in Language and Literature" (2007). This essay offers a total of 13 recommendations.
Reforzando las Redes: Supporting Latina/o Undergraduates at a State Flagship University
Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 2017
This study investigated the experiences of self-identified Latina/o students at a flagship state university. From a university-provided list of self-identified Latina/o undergraduate students, 117 responded to an online survey and 10 elected to participate in follow-up interviews. Students were asked about their participation in on-campus student clubs and organizations as well as interactions with faculty and staff. Nora’s student engagement model framed the qualitative exploration of three emerging themes, students’ levels of engagement in student organizations, their perceptions of levels of faculty support and accessibility, and their views about faculty and staff’s understandings of the unique and diverse roles of Latina/o students. Implications for university administrators, faculty, and staff are discussed.
LOS GUERREROS ACADÉMICOS: 30 Academically Invulnerable Mexican-American Students Who Forged Their Way into America’s Most Selective Universities, 2017
Undermatching refers to college ready students who select and enroll in colleges with selectivity levels significantly lower than their academic profile, resulting in attending a non-competitive college, a two-year college, or foregoing applying to college altogether. The current research trend examining the topic of Undermatching focuses on studies of low-income students in aggregate, ignoring the fastest growing racial/ethnic student demographic: Latinxs. Latinx1 students, as a subgroup, undermatch at the highest rate compared to all subgroups within the demographic of low-income, first generation students. While the majority of high-performing, low-income, Latinx students Undermatch, there is a small percentage of students from this demographic who avert undermatching and in fact properly match to selective colleges. This phenomenological study explored the behaviors, practices, and experiences, of 30 Mexican-American college sophomores (15 females and 15 males) whose demographic consisted of first-generation status, low-income, immigrant parents, English Learners, who earned admission to a highly selective college. This research study draws upon several theoretical frameworks to guide understanding of the ways in which this targeted demographic has the greatest potential to undermatch including Critical Race Theory, Cultural & Social Capital Theory, and Academic Invulnerability Theory. The study explores various environmental, psychological, and institutional factors, with emphasis on digital technology resources that impacted or influenced the college choice process of this target demographic. This study contributes to our understanding of the challenges, successful practices, and interventions that influenced and impacted participant’s pathway to a selective college. The purposeful sample was comprised of students who recently graduated from public high school in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Texas. The qualitative methodology consisted of individual, semi-structured interviews, and a Qualtrics Survey.