The Language Centerat Stanford University

Educating Leaders For Today’s World

THE STANFORDCHALLENGE

Seeking Solutions, Educating Leaders

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“I want Stanford students to be more than tourists—rather, they should be full partici-

pants in world affairs. Language mastery leads to a more intimate understanding of

other cultures, religions, literatures, and economies.” Richard SallerVERNON R. & LYSBETH WARREN ANDERSON DEAN KLEINHEINZ FAMILY PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN STUDIES

SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES & SCIENCES

Specialized InstructionApproximately half of Stanford’s 6,800 undergraduate students study a foreign language, and many study more than one. The reasons they study languages are as varied as the student body itself. Some plan to pursue careers in international business or engineering; others are involved in research or fieldwork with world relief organizations. Still others study language to get back in touch with their cultural roots. Professor Chao Fen Sun, chair of the Department of East Asian Languages, explains: “Students take Chinese for career opportunities, cultural enrichment, and family heritage, in that order.”

Remarkably, the Language Center is able to respond to all of these needs despite the huge demand. In keeping with Stanford’s philosophy of encouraging students to create their own educational paths, the Language Center offers an unparalleled variety of specialty courses—everything from Spanish for Medical Students to German for Business and International Relations to Accelerated Beginning Mandarin for Engineering Students.

The idea, says Elizabeth Bernhardt, the John Roberts Hale Director of the Language Center, is to give students language skills that will enable them “to hold the floor, make a presentation about a topic they have researched, or participate in a roundtable. We want to enhance whatever they’re doing in their academic work. So in second-year Spanish you’d see students giving oral presentations on, say, the emerging economy in Costa Rica or environmental issues in Mexico.”

Moreover, course offerings must be responsive to constantly changing student interest. For example, Arabic has quadrupled in popularity in recent years. The language program has not only accommodated all of the additional demand, but also maintained the small class sizes that are so vital to language instruction.

Of course, specialized attention and customized course selections in such high numbers require significant resources. And those resources are limited. Budget cuts have eliminated several languages, and further cuts could threaten the flexibility and breadth of offerings that are such a valuable element of language instruction.

BRIDGING THE LANGUAGE BARRIER OPENED

MANY DOORS FOR DESHKA FOSTER, ’08.

THANKS TO THE SWAHILI INSTRUCTION

SHE RECEIVED FROM THE LANGUAGE

CENTER, FOSTER WAS ABLE TO VOLUNTEER

IN LOCAL SCHOOLS IN EAST AFRICA WHILE

CONDUCTING MEDICAL RESEARCH ON HIV

AND CHILDHOOD MALARIA PREVENTION.

Stanford University’s Language Center has redefined the way language is studied. The world-class program sets itself apart from others thanks to two key advantages: a great variety of specialized courses and cutting-edge technology to enhance the traditional classroom experience. These advantages ensure that students will leave Stanford prepared to build partnerships with peers around the world in business, politics, health care, and other fields that increasingly connect our nations and benefit the world.

COVER PHOTO: JOSEPH KAUTZ

Cutting-edge TechnologySince the center’s founding in 1995, language enrollment at Stanford has grown by 22 percent. One key to keeping up with such high demand is the Digital Language Lab, a

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learning facility with multimedia-equipped classrooms and access to online oral assessments, multilingual writing, and voice recording. Using technology to conduct assessments outside the classroom allows instructors to spend more class time with students, which is one reason Stanford is able to offer a great variety of small, specialized courses.

Language technology has other benefits too. Online assessments allow instructors to measure students’ progress and tailor instruction accordingly. These measurements are a valuable tool for students as well. Sarah Itani, a freshman with a double major in anthropology and French and a minor in Middle Eastern studies, explains: “When you finish the program you get credentials that indicate your exact level of proficiency, from beginner all the way up to native. I think this will be very helpful on my resumé.”

The lab’s technology also gives students limitless opportunities to express themselves through various multimedia vocabularies. Students can drop in to record themselves on tape or video, make video podcasts that showcase their language skills, or have virtual conversations with students overseas. All of this is done in the company of other students practicing their own languages in a cross-cultural meeting place.

Language Center course offerings Spanish for Medical Students

Second-Year French: International Relations, Political Science, and Economics Emphasis

Advanced Oral Communication: Italian Contemporary Cinema

Business Chinese

Advanced Chinese Conversation

Intermediate German for Business and International Relations Advanced: German Newspapers

First-Year Japanese: Language, Culture, and Communication

Business Japanese

Intensive Beginning Swahili

Beginning Arabic: From Basic Script to Islamic Text

The Contemporary Arab World and Culture through Literature

SIMULATED ORAL PROFICIENCY INTERVIEWS (SOPI), SHOWN ABOVE, ARE A VALUABLE GAUGE OF STUDENTS’ CONVERSATIONAL SKILLS.

THEY RECORD NOT JUST RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS AND SCENARIOS, BUT ALSO RESPONSE TIMES.

Meet the StudentsDeshka Foster, ’08, found the specialized training she received in Swahili indispensable in the medical research and volunteer work she conducted in East Africa throughout her undergraduate career at Stanford. Foster worked in local schools as an HIV educator and gathered data on childhood malaria for her senior honors thesis. Now she has been admitted to Stanford’s MA program in African Studies, so she’s back at the Language Center again.

“When I returned to East Africa this past summer for a third time, I was able to collect most of my interview data without the help of a translator and navigate the country very effectively,” the aspiring physician recalls. “It would have been impossible to do this project without a basic knowledge of Swahili.”

Steve Louis-Andre Monroe, a junior majoring in international relations, has also found the Language Center essential to his studies. Having arrived at Stanford speaking some Arabic already—he spent his middle school and high school years in Bahrain and Kuwait, where his father was a diplomat—he is now studying advanced-level Arabic and working on his honors thesis, which focuses on a conservative sect of Muslims.

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“I’m taking a media-oriented class in Arabic right now, which I love,” Monroe says. “The vocabulary is all based on current events, so it’s really relevant to my studies.”

Though Monroe is impressed with the quality of the Arabic classes he is taking, saying they’re small and accessible enough to empower him to ask questions, he wishes more classes were offered. He’s not sure what he will do to keep making progress, since no classes are offered beyond his proficiency level.

CONTACT USFor more information about supporting the LanguageCenter, please contact:

Cindi TrostAssociate Director of Development

650.724.2812 (T) 650.736.8748 (F)

cjtrost@stanford.edu

A STUDENT PRESENTS A MEDICAL REPORT ENTIRELY IN SPANISH. THIS KIND OF PRACTICE

IS PART OF WHAT MAKES STANFORD’S LANGUAGE CENTER SO EFFECTIVE.

TALENTED STUDENTS CREATE A MURAL TO

ENLIVEN THE DIGITAL LANGUAGE LAB.

A Shared Responsibility Monroe’s concerns are well founded: Staffing cuts led to a 10 percent decrease in lecturers, which means that fewer sections and bigger classes are on the horizon. “We had a wonderful woman teaching Hindi, someone who had graduated from Berkeley with a PhD,” Professor Bernhardt recalls. “She wanted to stay here, but I didn’t have the financial resources to keep her. She ended up going to teach Hindi on the East Coast. I had to watch this wonderful teacher just vanish.”

As a key component of Stanford’s International Initiative, which brings together fac-ulty and students from different fields to study complex global topics, the Language Center is a vital part of the university. This program is such a high priority that Dean Richard Saller of the School of Humanities and Sciences has allocated generous matching funds from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to attract gifts to support instruction and new technology for the Language Center. It is our hope that the excellence of the Lan-guage Center will be sustained by a partnership of international donors, Stanford friends in the United States, and the university.

We seek to raise $25 million of endowed and expendable funds. This goal includes support for small class sizes, new courses, and digital technology.

At Stanford, we believe this: all universities share the obligation to educate future genera-tions to participate effectively in the global community.

GIVING OPPORTUNITIES (COST TO DONOR) NAMING GIFT FOR LANGUAGE CENTER $10 million Gift earns $6 million in matching funds, creating a $16 million endowment NAMING GIFT FOR THE DIGITAL LANGUAGE LAB $5 million Gift earns $3 million in matching funds, creating an $8 million endowment FUNDS FOR LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION Endowed or expendable gifts of any amount are welcome; endowment gifts of $250,000 or more earn matching funds at a 3:5 ratio

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