Over the summer I was invited by Shawn Gralla to be a member of the Fall 2017-Spring 2018 Student Advisory Council (SAC) for the Modern Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics department. Two other students and I represent the Spanish department, while there are also others that represent other languages offered (Portuguese, French, Arabic, Latin, German, etc.). All members as of now were recommended by faculty, so I am honored to be part of it! Everybody in this committee cares about the language they are learning and the learning of cultures all together. The purpose of SAC is to find ways to improve the MLL department in order to better serve students in their academic and professional careers. Unfortunately, I cannot be a member for too long, since I am studying abroad for an entire semester in 3 months (aw/yay!)

 

A few people of the Spanish group proposed an idea to find a way to separate students who aim for a major/minor in Spanish vs students who only taking languages to graduate—that is, to divide students who actually want to pursue and take language learning seriously and students who, by the end of 2 years/4 semesters, leave only knowing how to say “Hola. Cómo estás? ¿Dónde está el baño?” I do like this idea, but it could get complicated if you consider the fact that every student takes a placement exam before enrolling into a foreign language class if they had previous exposure to it in secondary school. Also, does this have an affect on the specification of “quality” of teachers to take on the “gen-ed Spanish students” vs the major/minor students?

 

In thinking to myself, I would love Spanish minors/majors to have more fun electives to choose from! We recently added the Translation elective that began this fall, but what about a Spanish gastronomy class, where students not only study cultural dishes, but they actually take field trips or even make dishes themselves?

 

Our next meeting is soon, so I will update what we talk about then.