Update on the Foreign Language Requirement

Our friends from Spanish and Portuguese have informed us that the School of Humanities at UC Irvine decided to not tamper with the Foreign Language Requirement after all. Currently, all Humanities Majors are required to take a Foreign Language (other than English) up to the 2C Level to fulfill a general education requirement. All other majors only have to take up to 1C or the equivalent.

But, really... we just keep getting all types of information saying one thing and then another. Perhaps it is time to settle things and ask that the responses to the Needs Attention Memo be made more clear and transparent.

Two Birds With One Stone Or How UCI Managed to Dumb Down Students and Become a Threat to National Security

Two years ago there was a proposal being tossed around amongst the decision makers at the University of California, Irvine regarding several of the general education requirements. The thought was to cut general education requirements (including the multicultural and foreign language categories) in order to make it more enticing for students to pursue a degree in other fields (i.e. engineering, science). There was a protest in which students and faculty discussed how the particular targeting of these categories amounted to an assault on culture but it only made the university governing body flinch a bit and delay what they believed to be the inevitable based on their poor assessment of education and student needs. Subsequently, and during a month of active student protest which included a mock funeral for education on the campus, three people (an undergrad, a grad, and a faculty member) were allowed to witness about 10 minutes of a two hour meeting in which they were told by the decision makers that nothing was going to be cut, that everything out there was merely a rumor gone viral.

A year passed by and the foreign language requirement got cut in half.

Later, the Humanities faced a large budget shortfall. In order to save the faculty and the school, the Dean of Humanities proposed, among other drastic measures, that the foreign language requirement be shortened or cut (just like it was proposed the previous year), although it is still unclear how this would save the Humanities any money. The logic behind this, was the infamous "Needs Attention" memo, predicting a grim future for the Humanities at UCI.

Today, UCI's requirements in categories VI, VII, and VIII (Foreign Language Other than English, Multicultural Studies, and International/Global Issues, respectively), have been reduced to a single course per category (See UCI General Catalog Page 56), while categories II and V (Science and Technology and Quantitative, Symbolic, and Computational Reasoning) still stand at three courses minimum requirement for all undergraduates.

With this overhaul, the University of California, Irvine has managed to accomplish only three things: dumb its student population down, increase their health risks, and contributed to heightened threats to national security.

How exactly have these results come about?

The New York Times reports that according to two separate studies performed in 2004 and 2009, researchers have found out that bilingualism is a fundamental strategy for problem solving that not only increases brain function but helps people to live healthier lives:

"Bilingualism’s effects also extend into the twilight years. In a recent study of 44 elderly Spanish-English bilinguals, scientists led by the neuropsychologist Tamar Gollan of the University of California, San Diego, found that individuals with a higher degree of bilingualism — measured through a comparative evaluation of proficiency in each language — were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease: the higher the degree of bilingualism, the later the age of onset."

Surely, a single course in foreign language is not enough to develop "proficiency" in it.

Moreover, a recent meeting from the Council on Foreign Relations which included former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and New York's former school teacher's Chancellor, Joel I. Klein, announced that threats to national security are heightened when there is an inadequate (or poor) emphasis on foreign language learning at schools. Albeit, the focus of the Council's meeting was prompting the creation of a more adequate "human capital" pool for a "volunteer army", the fact that even the military is recognizing the need for more and better language learning and teaching only emphasizes the real and immediate consequences that poor decisions by other types of capitalists like UCIs decision makers have on the future of America.

Yes we are becoming dumber, less healthy, and we are letting our poor military down... (read the sarcasm on the last point). But at what gain?

How much money has the School of Humanities really saved in all of this? How long can it sustain itself by making equally worthless decisions that will, no doubt, end up creating a vicious cycle in which there will be less students taking foreign language, thus needing less T.A.s to teach the courses, thus needing less Faculty to teach graduate courses, thus needing less of everything over and over again?

This is a race to the bottom that all of us will lose.

School of Humanities Departments Veto Language Requirements

Our comrades from the Spanish & Portuguese department held their last meeting a couple of weeks ago. The Grad Student meeting revealed that there will be changes in the language requirement:

Departments are now free to decide what their language requirement will be since school wide requirements have been stopped.

English majors will still have to take another language (good, b/c English is 40% of total enrollment in Humanities, they total 900 majors).

The Departments of Art History, Philosophy, Visual studies, Film and Media will all reject language requirements.

History is still undecided about the language requirement as of last faculty meeting on 1/11.

Spanish is expected to lose 10% of enrollment in undergrad courses as a result of these Humanities departments' decision to do away with the requirement.

The State of the Department of Chicano Latino Studies: a response to the APG report

Preamble

The Department of Chicano Latino Studies derives its mission from stated objectives of the University of California system which read: “Diversity should be integral to the University’s achievement of excellence. Diversity can enhance the ability of the University to accomplish its academic mission.”  The University of California system further commits itself to “remove barriers to recruitment, retention and advancement… of historically excluded populations who are currently underrepresented.”

In keeping with these University of California long-term goals, and as stated in our 2006-2016 Strategic Plan, the Chicano Latino Studies Department core mission is to apply an interdisciplinary scholarly approach to the study of issues and challenges facing the fastest growing minority group in the United States, and one historically understudied: Latinos.  Evidence of our success in this role is amply available in faculty members’ scholarly contributions and the academic achievement of our undergraduate majors and affiliated graduate students.

Our curriculum seeks to provide knowledge, critical understanding and appreciation of the language, history, culture, literature, sociology, anthropology, politics, social ecology, health, medicine, and creative accomplishments (art, dance, drama, film, music) in Chicano/Latino communities. Our faculty concentrates in the areas of migration, the historical understanding of cultural experiences of Latino populations, and issues of inequality and access to opportunities within U.S. society—the three areas we situated under the rubric of Migration, Memory and Access in our 2006-2016 Strategic Plan. Last year the Department of Chicano Latino Studies: Dean’s Summary & Departmental Narrative-2011 provides ample evidence as to the excellence, high productivity and national recognition of our faculty members in those areas.

Beyond our areas of research and teaching concentration, the DCLS is strategically located as a social science research group focused on issues for which UCI has a regional advantage.  Southern California is a living interactive laboratory of cultural exchanges. Latinos comprise over a third of the population of the state of California, and an even larger percentage in Southern California, making them a critical area of inquiry for the UC system. The DCLS focus on Latinos is consistent with UC Irvine’s commitment to interdisciplinary study and the education of students to function productively in a multi-cultural and multi-racial society and world.

The Chicano Latino Studies Department is also committed to increasing the number of Latino students that enter and graduate from UCI. We are actively involved in outreach to local communities, and co-curricular and mentoring support for current students. Chicano Latino Studies seeks to increase the matriculation, persistence and graduate rates of Latino students and prepare them for leadership roles in a global society.

The present role of the DCLS aligns with UC system diversity values and goals, supporting its academic mission. Through our interdisciplinary faculty and curriculum, the DCLS is integrated into the academic work of the School and the University. The excellence of our faculty is well-documented in publications, grants received, honors and awards. Evidence of the DCLS outstanding teaching can be found in the academic achievements of our undergraduate majors and affiliated graduate students. The DCLS is also integrated into outreach, recruitment and mentoring of under-represented students. The demographic trends of the region and rising cohorts of potential Chicano-Latino undergraduate students attest to the future prospects of our department.

The DCLS faculty is extremely distressed by the absence of any reference to diversity goals in the APG report’s evaluation.  The report also lacks any discussion or assessment of student persistence and graduation rates.

The DCLS faculty believes that, at this time of financial stress, it is supremely important to take a long term look at the future of UC Irvine, beyond short-term challenges, and that broad rather than narrow gauges of productivity be utilized.  In short, what kind of University do we want to have? This is something that must be addressed by the APG and the University.  We believe that the terms of the discussion engaged by the APG need to be changed.