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The following is a special presentation of Ashland University's College of Arts and Sciences.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the CAS spotlight,
a show where we spotlight the different departments, staff, and faculty from the
College of Arts and Sciences.
I'm your host Rebecca Ribley.
With seventeen departments across campus, Ashland's College of Arts and Sciences
encompasses a wide range of programs with everything from art to social work,
history and politics, english to foreign languages, just to name a few.
Today in the spotlight, we have Dr. Jennifer Rathbun and Dr. Barbara Schmidt-Rinehart
from Ashland University's Foreign Languages department.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
Thank you. It's our pleasure we're really excited to talk about the many
benefits of studying a foreign language here at Ashland University.
So, to start out, I want to ask how many Foreign Languages do we offer here at Ashland?
To begin with, I'd like to highlight our two programs that we offer
full Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science of Education in
and that's Spanish and French.
Those are the two most commonly taught languages in the United States
and in the state of Ohio.
So, we have both a Bachelors and a BSEd in Spanish and French.
We also offer a wide variety of minors in Spanish and French, as well.
In addition to those two languages,
we have added Portuguese to our curriculum and in the Fall of 2013,
we'll be offering Portuguese for the first time ever here at Ashland
and we have also incorporated the study of Latin into our department as well.
So, what would you say is unique about our particular program here at Ashland?
That's hard to summarize in just a few words!
There are so many different aspects that make the study of Foreign Languages different and
unique to Ashland University,
but I would like to highlight, especially since we're here with
Barb Schmidt-Rinehart, the program that we have in Costa Rica,
which is a real addition to the Spanish program.
Barb has been in charge of AU Abroad,
which has been in Mexico for some years
and then transferred to Costa Rica just a few years ago.
I don't know if she would like to speak on that.
Yeah, I think it's unique for us because it's so integral to our department.
We have students going to Costa Rica, to Santa Ana,
right outside of San Jose, each summer,
and they study for four, six, or eight weeks and they live with families
and it's the optimal learning environment and
here we practice a lot of formal instruction in class, but there they have
the opportunity to go outside of class
and practice everything that they learned inside of class.
So, it's been really successful because of that and Costa Rica is a great country to study in.
It's very stable and peaceful and beautiful,
as far as biodiversity, but the main thing is our students,
many many of our students
do the Costa Rica program in order to
really make the language come alive for them
and it's been a favorite part of our program.
It's not just for people that major and minor in languages.
Anybody that is studying the language, once they've had one year, is eligible for our program.
So, yeah, we find that to be a really unique part.
I think too, just about,
the fact that
our professors teach language classes as well literature classes
and civilization classes. We advise our students, so from the very beginning,
students are involved with their professors and we just have excellent
professors and are very hands-on in the classroom and with the students,
and we teach for proficiency and we travel a lot,
and we all have really dedicated our lives to the study of languages and
we, hopefully, are passing that enthusiasm along to our students.
I think that's why a lot of students come to AU,
because it's very hands-on and you get to make a relationship with your
professors and I think that's great and that's what you guys are doing.
Definitely. So, what drew you, personally, to the Foreign Language department?
You know, it was so long ago...
This is my 27th year at Ashland, so I can hardly remember that.
But I will tell you that,
well first of all,
I first went abroad when I was 16. So, I'm like the study abroad queen,
and I studied abroad all through college and just loved Spanish ever since I had a
really significant Spanish professor in high school.
But what draws me to be a professor at AU is
I think just that, the smallness of AU,
you can make a difference in a hurry with the students, and across campus,
and with curriculum. It's easy to get things done,
and i think that that's what draws me to stay at AU for my whole career,
because I think that I was really able to
affect change in the lives of a lot of students and get other people
passionate about the language and have the the freedom to create programs,
and, we we're in Mexico for 20 years, we've been in Costa Rica for 5 years and
we have student studying in other countries.
We work across disciplines with students of all majors and
we can easily stay in our area of expertise,
mine a second language acquisition and spanish linguistics,
but I also teach basic language classes and
that gives me the chance to be with the students that aren't majors and minors,
and that doesn't always happen at all universities,
and that's what I like about Ashland.
What about for you?
Well, the study and a foreign language opens the door to new worlds,
but it also opens the door to self-discovery,
and I discovered long ago that I love literature.
But it was in the university setting that I discovered that I actually love literature in Spanish,
and I wanted to
share that knowledge with
future upcoming generations,
and I found that what attracted me to Ashland, to being a professor with Ashland,
is so many of the students at Ashland have not yet traveled and they begin to
explore the world through our classrooms when we open the doors for them
and then, actually, a lot of our students do go abroad, once if not twice,
and in fact several of our students, in the Spanish program especially,
attend the Costa Rica program, comeback, and they want to go again,
and they wind up spending a semester abroad somewhere else.
So, for me, it was the desire to share my personal passion with students.
So, going off of that, what would you say is the value of learning a foreign language?
It's invaluable, actually. You can't put a dollar sign to it.
As I've said before, it opens the door to self-discovery.
You learn so much about yourself when you have to express yourself in another language.
You learn a lot about your culture and your beliefs when you learn about
someone else's culture and beliefs,
and you can learn how strong and independent you are by functioning in another language.
Not only that, learning another language gives you a skillset that
is in demand and is marketable.
So, if you are graduating today and you speak another language,
you're just gonna be that much more attractive to a potential employer,
than someone who has not studied another language.
In the case of Spanish, there's 55 million Hispanics living in the United States.
We're the third-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world.
You need Spanish to do almost any profession, anywhere,
even here in Ashland.
We get contacted from businesses and individuals.
They need someone that can speak both languages.
That's very well put. I can't imagine having too much to add to that,
but I can't imagine not knowing another language in 2013,
and when you look at living in this global society,
and people talk about being globally competent,
the idea that you would only be able to communicate in one language and not cross-cultures,
because linguistically, you can go vacation and you can
interact with other people but if you can't speak their language,
you can't really make that cross cultural connection.
So, I can't imagine being monolingual in 2013;
it just doesn't connect for me, it doesn't compute for me,
that in this world today and we're looking for people to be globally competent
across linguistic and cultural boundaries.
You just can't do that without knowing another language.
So, how many different languages do you know?
I'm only proficient in Spanish and English.
I can read Italian, French, and Portuguese, reading knowledge,
but I only speak Spanish and English.
What about you?
The same.
Do you find it's easier to read the different languages because you know Spanish?
Yeah, the second and third and fourth languages, you know, come easier.
The third, fourth, and fifth, I guess it would be, after that.
Once, also,
once a student or when someone has knowledge of a foreign language,
you can maneuver with much greater ease in a foreign setting and with a foreign language.
You know how to communicate.
So, they're transferable skills,
and also, with the study of French or Spanish, they have similar roots.
So, if you're put in a situation where you are only listening to another language
that you haven't necessarily studied,
you can still figure it out and operate.
You're also, when you learn the language, you're learning about...
you're learning a cultural competency, which is also transferable,
in other situations and languages, as well.
So, I want to go on by talking about something new that was added to
the 2012-2013 catalogue, and that is the GPS.
Can you expand on that and explain what it is?
I love the title, GPS, because, you know, so many of us, these days, have a GPS,
in our cars and it helps us get to our destination.
And so, I like to think of the GPS really guiding the student,
to get to their destination and what is that destination?
It's someone who can be globally competent,
someone who can cross linguistic and cultural barriers.
And so Ashland has put together this great program,
we're a student can decide which pathway
or which trip do I want to take it?
Do I want to study the modern language track?
Do I want to combine languages with some other courses about culture and english?
Or do I just want to study abroad?
and I think that all three of those tracks are amazing,
and I also see how foreign languages it's really an essential part
to every single one of those tracks.
After this short break, we'll be back with
more on Ashland University's Foreign Languages departments,
right after this.
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Storytellers wanted!
If you're just joining us, our guests on this edition of the CAS spotlight
are Chair of the Foreign Languages department, Dr. Jennifer Rathbun,
and professor, Barbara Schidt-Rinehart.
Thank you again for being with us!
So, I want to go on about talking about the GPS,
and I want to ask you,
do you think students are taking advantage of the study abroad portion in that?
I think it's probably the biggest challenge for students.
I think that the original view
and excitement of the GPS was to get more people studying languages
and more people studying abroad, in whatever form that would be.
So, that's why the tracks were put together the way they were.
I think that it's challenging for students to consider it,
if they've never considered it before.
That's why the Costa Rica program works out so well,
because some students go on the Costa Rica program
as a requirement and they say over and over again,
"I never dreamt that I would be doing something like this,
because I'm not a language major and look at me,
and look at what this has done. This has changed my life."
And so that's, I think, the same thing with the study abroad,
whether it's short term or whether it's for a semester,
sometimes we have to really help students embraced the idea and see that
it is possible. I mean, there are scholarships,
sometimes it doesn't cost any more than being here on campus.
It is integrated into your course requirements.
it's not just something extra and on top of it.
So, and then of course, we really like the ones that have the language and the study abroad combined,
because, you know that's perfect,
but I think that the,
the answer to your question probably no, right this time, as many
people as we would like are not taking advantage of that option,
but I think it's just a matter of time. We need to change our culture on campus,
so that people, when they come to Ashland University, they say "I'm a student
at Ashland University and I go abroad, or I study languages," and that's what it
means to have a GPS requirement and I think that's what we're all working toward.
We are slowly changing the culture here on campus.
Programs like this, for example, help spread the word to talk about the
benefits of studying abroad, to talk about the benefits of studying a foreign language
because, since it was not a requirements or built into
many of the programs before,
there's even, there's faculty members that are still unaware of the benefits,
they're still unaware when it needs to study a language or to study abroad.
So, slowly we're changing the culture and I think over time,
we will see a greater number of students
traveling and a greater number of students studying a language,
as my colleague just said. It'll be like their badge of honor.
"I go to Ashland and this is what I do."
So what time of the year does the Costa Rica trip take place?
It takes place right in the time you shouldn't be visiting Costa Rica, in the rainy season... No.
No, students typically go, it's a flexible program but our dates are
like the middle of May, right after graduation, for 4, 6, or 8 weeks.
so it's May 18th to June 16th,
or something like that this year,
and it's not a faculty-led trip and were pretty adamant about that in the
foreign language department because we believe that students are adults.
We believe they can travel on their own and we do catch them down
there and have a very high support system for them down there
and I do go down and visit them while they're down there but
the students live with families and they attend the school
down there that we're in very close contact with,
but they're on their own to do a study abroad for even that short period
of time, but it's in May and June
is typically when students go.
So, do the majority of the Foreign Language majors choose to study abroad?
Definitely. Yes.
They realize that they've been learning this language and they
want to put it to use in one of its native contexts.
They've become really excited. Several students plan
their trips
for an entire year before going.
So, when they come back, do you see growth in there language development?
Definitely. Definitely and you know there's nothing like being totally immersed in the language
to boost your proficiency in that language,
but not only that, I talked about self-discovery earlier.
Traveling abroad is, you know, an intense period of self-discovery,
so we find that our students come back and they've matured:
intellectually, emotionally.
They're adults.
They're ready to graduate. They're ready to move into their next steps.
I joke with them because typically when we send our students off,
we see them as being,
they're still young college students and when they come back, they are very much
young adults, ready for their profession. They're citizens of the world, to not be too trite,
but it really does happen, that they very much have kind of just embraced that whole
global view of things
and it's a life-changing experience for them and I think the
language is their entree to really understanding a culture.
So you both obviously would highly recommend studying abroad to any student?
Definitely!
Yes!
Alright, thank you so much for being with us today.
Thank you so much for joining us today, on this episode of the CAS Spotlight.
I'm your host, Rebecca Ribley.
See you next time.