Subcommittee on International Studies and Languages
Executive Summary
May 2005
Note: Each Task Force Report is a collection of background information, analyses, and recommendations that are submitted to the Planning Steering Committee and the President. Over the summer, the Steering Committee and the President will review and discuss all 15 sets of recommendations together in the context of the College's available resources.
Although international studies and languages are considered traditional strengths at Middlebury, and have been recognized as "peaks," the task force found many ways in which these important areas of our curriculum could be improved and highlighted. The task force focused its attention on 4 major areas: international studies (broadly conceived), linkages between our summer language schools and the undergraduate curriculum, languages during the academic year, and study abroad. We approached our task by thinking about what we could do to make these important areas of our curriculum even better than they are, and how we could get the word out about what we are doing at Middlebury.
In the area of international studies, the task force recommends the following: the establishment of a new committee to oversee international education at Middlebury that will include faculty, staff, and students; a new communications strategy to publicize our accomplishments and efforts in international education; reconsidering how we structure faculty appointments to make their commitments to our international interdisciplinary majors clearer; strengthening African and South Asian Studies; internationalizing Middlebury's entire curriculum; incorporating English and American Studies into our understanding of international education; promoting the involvement of our international students in international education; providing more opportunities for student and faculty/student collaborative research abroad; pursuing external grant opportunities in international studies; and linking up our international education efforts with the broader Vermont community.
When it comes to linking our summer language schools with the undergraduate curriculum, we recommend that communication between our academic year language departments and the summer schools be increased. We also recommend that other contacts between the language schools and academic year faculty be enhanced in a variety of ways. In addition, we propose that our financial aid policy be reevaluated, with an eye towards increasing financial aid for language school students, students studying abroad, and those students studying languages that we do not teach and thus study languages at other institutions before going abroad.
When considering how we teach languages at Middlebury, we recommend the following: improving the situation facing language tables, particularly when it comes to the venue for language tables; hosting a conference on languages; strengthening our offerings in foreign languages across the curriculum (FLAC) classes; improving the infrastructure and support for our language houses; enhancing senior work in foreign languages for students who have returned from abroad; encouraging curricular innovation to better prepare students for study abroad in the target language; promoting linguistics at Middlebury; and continuing and strengthening recent efforts to establish co-curricular activities that focus on language and literature.
Finally, the committee recommends a number of steps in study abroad, including: establishing Middlebury programs in the Middle East and Japan; enhancing the connections between faculty at Middlebury and faculty at our schools abroad; encouraging more internships abroad; renaming our off-campus study office to an "international programs" office; establishing a new committee on study abroad policy to replace the current programs abroad committee; reestablishing off-campus J-Term courses; increasing opportunities for natural science courses at our schools abroad; and strengthening our study abroad advisory boards.
We realize that the large number of recommendations contained in our report cannot be implemented immediately. We have made no concerted effort to prioritize them, for several reasons. First, it should be self-evident which of the recommendations could be implemented immediately, and which would need more time to implement. Second, some of the recommendations would, if implemented, be more costly than others, and we assume that implementing these recommendations would not happen immediately. We do hope, however, that all of these recommendations could be implemented by the end of the current planning horizon. Third, many of the recommendations could be implemented with little to no expense, and we would like to see these recommendations implemented in the next year or two.
How to implement them, in the end? We recommend that a newly constituted international committee be charged with seeing that these recommendations be implemented. This committee could identify those college offices that would need to be mobilized to ensure implementation, and could propose procedures and structures that would make them happen. In the end, we believe that all of the recommendations contained in the report would make Middlebury a stronger institution, and hope that we can take the steps to make them happen.
Members:
Ian Barrow
Jeff Cason, chair
Armelle Crouzières-Ingenthron
Kathy Foley-Giorgio
Michael Geisler
Jim Maddox
Ana Martínez-Lage
Carrie Reed
Allison Stanger