At a time of dwindling funds for foreign language studies, UCLA faculty members hope a $750,000 grant will help revitalize area and language studies at the university.
The UCLA Division of Humanities and the International Institute received a grant of this amount last month from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
“Receiving this grant from Mellon specifically directed toward (language and area studies) is a big boost to our capacity and our spirit,” said C. Cindy Fan, interim vice provost for international studies and the International Institute.
The Mellon Foundation, which awards grants for higher education, conservation and performing arts, among other causes, reached out to the UCLA administration in fall 2011 to financially support a partnership between the humanities division and the International Institute at UCLA in light of decreased federal funding for foreign language instruction, said David Schaberg, dean of the Division of Humanities and a professor of Asian languages and cultures.
It is fairly uncommon for separate departments or entities at UCLA to partner up to apply for grant money, said Jennifer Foley, director of corporate and foundation relations at UCLA.
Even though departments at UCLA have received larger grants in the past, the $750,000 grant is sizeable, given the state of the economy and budget cuts to the university, Foley said.
The cuts have made it difficult for the International Institute to hire teachers for its program’s courses. The institute has already made plans to condense the six area studies degree programs offered at UCLA to four degrees under the same administration starting this fall.
The area studies majors, Latin American studies, European studies, Asian studies, and African and Middle Eastern studies, were consolidated into one department because of their academic similarities and the International Institute’s financial inability to hire its own faculty, said Michael Thies, a professor of political science and chair of the international and area studies interdepartmental program. The international area studies degree programs, housed in the International Institute, now have fewer of their own courses and rely even more on other departments, he added.
With less funding and more students, language courses at UCLA have become increasingly difficult to enroll in.
Sy Clark, a second-year psychobiology and French student, was unable to enroll in any prerequisite courses for the French major in the fall because of time conflicts and limited course offerings.
“I can see the budget cuts already making an impact,” Clark said. “I’m hoping this grant will eventually fix something like that.”
The grant itself will not solve Clark’s problem. But faculty members hope the enhancements to UCLA’s foreign language programs will attract outside donors to provide additional resources, Schaberg said.
All area studies degree programs have a foreign language requirement, which makes a partnership between Humanities and the International Institute natural, Thies said. Many of the members of the international and area studies faculty advisory committee come from language and culture departments in the humanities division, Thies added.
The grant will also act as starter money for new programs in both the Division of Humanities and the International Institute.
On the International Institute side, a master’s degree program for professionals who want to add an international element to their work is in the planning stages and the grant money will help move it along, Schaberg said.
The Division of Humanities plans to create a Language Alliance, Schaberg said.
The Language Alliance will be a place where language instructors from different departments can come together to develop new programs, Schaberg said.
The new programs may include “distance learning,” language courses offered to students across the country and the world or language proficiency tests to demonstrate students’ readiness for the workforce, he added.
“For the most part, the faculty members teach language in isolation from those teaching other languages,” Schaberg said. “We have these great people teaching, but they don’t have a venue in which they can share their best ideas.”
The goal of the alliance, which is set to be established within the next three years, is to attract donors and outside financial support to help sustain and bolster the foreign language departments at UCLA, Schaberg said.
“It’s not cheap to teach language at UCLA,” Schaberg said. “But, a great university does not cut its language requirement. … The Language Alliance is going to be a very good place to draw attention both on campus and off campus to the importance of language studies.”