Languages students react to proposed cuts in majors

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Students in the Modern Languages and Classics Department are scared.

First-year modern languages student Keegan Burdette said she heard from one of her professors earlier this week that the university was considering cutting her major. It sent her and several of her friends into panic mode.

Burdette, who came to the university from California for her degree, said a lot of students in the department were shocked. Several of her classmates wondered if they would have to leave the university.

The Wednesday release of the interim report from the Academic Program Prioritization Working Group, which was charged by President Robert Kennedy with creating a plan to reorganize the majors and programs at the university, quelled some of those fears. The report said enrolled students would be able to finish their degrees, regardless of what changes are approved by the president. But the memo recommended the elimination of the majors offered by the MLC department, including German, French, Latin and Spanish.

“This is a really bad choice,” Burdette said. “People already insult Maine culture. If they eliminate MLC, there won’t be any culture left.”

“It’s been hard to reassure students that their lives are secure, that their degree choices are secure,” said professor Raymond Pelletier, the chairman of the Modern Languages and Classics Department. He said there is a lack of understanding of the value of learning another language, something he said could not be given a numeric value and ranked on a list.

“We need to go at this philosophically, not by the numbers.” Pelletier said. “This institution needs to be educated about the language-learning process.”

Professor Kathleen March, a Spanish instructor, said the recommendation to eliminate the major but maintain instruction, as written in the APPWG report, is too vague. She said it could mean eliminating the high-level courses while still offering 100 and 200 level classes.

“It’s absolutely embarrassing that the flagship university would not continue to teach languages at the highest level,” March said. “You can’t learn to know, respect and love other cultures without being able to talk to them.”

She worries that if upper-level courses are not a part of the foreign language future at UMaine, faculty who have earned doctoral degrees in foreign languages be reduced to teaching only the basic level and may leave. Getting rid of the major would decrease the likelihood of maintaining a flow of students into foreign language courses, she said.

“If students aren’t coming in, there won’t be enough students to maintain what’s left of the department,” March said. “If you stop letting in majors, you kill the department.”

March stressed that MLC faculty do more than just teach students to conjugate verbs; they teach multiculturalism and tolerance. She said her courses cover topics from politics to women’s rights, economics to social movements and history — all in Spanish. She said that more students from other disciplines, such as business or engineering, were adding foreign languages to their course portfolios to make themselves more marketable.

“A lot of majors are enhanced by language learning,” March said.

All three said they planned to take their case to the public informational forum Monday, where the administration will hear the public’s opinion on the proposed changes to UMaine programming.

“We’re going to put our best foot forward Monday,” Pelletier said. He said he would go into the forum with a goal of convincing the administration to keep the majors offered by his department.

Burdette said she is telling everyone she knows to attend the forum, but that she is worried not enough people know what is proposed.

“People need to know what’s going on,” she said. “It’s hard to fight something you can’t see.”

As for March, she said her passion for languages will bring her to the forum.

“I won’t be fighting to save my department,” she said. “I’ll be fighting to save languages.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 25th, 2010, 4:01 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.