Ohio State University: Department of Germanic Languages

Transcription

1 Ohio State University: Department of Germanic Languages ADFL Bulletin, Vol. 35, Nos. 2-3 (Winter-Spring 2004), pp ISSN: CrossRef DOI: /adfl Copyright 2004 by The Association of Departments of Foreign Languages All material published by the The Association of Departments of Foreign Languages in any medium is protected by copyright. Users may link to the ADFL Web page freely and may quote from ADFL publications as allowed by the doctrine of fair use. Written permission is required for any other reproduction of material from any ADFL publication. Send requests for permission to reprint material to the ADFL permissions manager by mail (26 Broadway, New York, NY ), or fax ( ).

2 Ohio State University Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures WE BELIEVE that the enrollment gains in our basic and intermediate language courses and some of our advanced major courses are primarily due to the excellent reputation these courses enjoy campus-wide. Students enrolled in the language requirement courses frequently cite German heritage as a reason for choosing to study German. More recently, students have increasingly cited having visited a German-speaking country or having a friend or significant other who speaks German. Others consider German an important language for international business and economics. While some inner-city high schools have lost their German programs, some suburban high schools in Ohio have extended their offerings to fourth- or even fifth-year German. Students in these programs often have significant exposure to German culture and usually place into fourth-quarter German or out of the language requirement entirely and tend to take some of our 200-level courses to further pursue their interest. Enrollments in newly developed or revamped general education courses taught in English have also increased significantly over the last five years courses such as Weimar and the Third Reich in Film and Literature, Literature in Cultural Context, Scandinavian Mythology, and courses on film (particularly the films of Ingmar Bergman), on the Holocaust, on German cultural history, and Yiddish literature in translation. Some students discover their interest in learning one of our languages in one of our general education curriculum classes. At the same time, enrollments in the department s two less commonly taught languages, Swedish and Yiddish, have fallen significantly in recent years. We have not yet found a conclusive explanation for this phenomenon that seems to affect other less commonly taught languages as well. Finances Ohio State University has instituted a responsibilitycentered budget system that emphasizes enrollments and quality. The main quality indicators include time to degree, job placement, students SAT and GRE scores, number of honors students, upward movement of the department s programs in national rankings of graduate and undergraduate programs, and national and international awards and honors of faculty members. While departments enjoy much freedom in allocating their budgets, the overall cost of the department should ideally not exceed the department s revenues. Thanks to growing enrollments and two recent endowments, the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures breaks about even and expects some financial leeway because of its above-average rankings in several quality indicators. Staffing Patterns The department s faculty lines have been relatively steady at sixteen (two in Yiddish, one in Swedish, the rest in German). Two positions are funded from endowments, the Ohio Eminent Scholar Endowment for German studies and the Vorman Anderson Endowment for Scandinavian studies. In addition, the department employs on average two visiting assistant professors, who tend to specialize in second- and third-year language and general education courses, and one Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor from a German-speaking country. Occasionally, we have also employed a DAAD-sponsored visiting professor from Germany. Recent changes in enrollment accounting have made it possible for faculty members to teach occasionally in other departments (most commonly in comparative studies, English, philosophy, women's studies) without the department's losing any revenue. In the College of Humanities, revenue follows in these instances a faculty member s home department, not the course number s home department a significant chance for smaller departments to contribute to the overall mission of the college. The number of graduate students has also been kept steady at about thirty, of which about twenty- ADFL Bulletin, Vol. 35, Nos. 2-3, Winter-Spring by the association of departments of foreign languages

3 Ohio State University 105 two are employed as TAs in any given year (the others are at one of our exchange programs with German universities, enjoy various intra- or extramural fellowships, or are employed in other departments). Most students are enrolled in the MA program. The number of students admitted to the PhD program has been reduced to ensure the highest possible quality in the program. Because of the limited job market, we have aimed at one PhD graduate a year on average, which has resulted in a one hundred percent job placement in recent years, which, in turn, has increased the outlook of our PhD students considerably. Institutional and Community Context Because of its land-grant mission and the attendant benefits to students and families of lower-cost in-state tuition, Ohio State's student population is made up largely of in-state students, some of whom claim German heritage. The heritage factor does not bring a large number of heritage speakers to the university, but it does attract students who are interested in learning the language of their grandparents or greatgrandparents. Two popular overseas programs the intensive German summer program in Dresden (taught by our faculty members and TAs), which covers third- to fifth-quarter German, and our semester- or year-abroad program at the University of Bonn (students receive Ohio State credit for classes taken at the University of Bonn) have made studying German more attractive for many students. Students can expect generous support from various sources (ranging from Max Kade grants to locally sponsored grants) for both programs so that the costs of participating in these programs usually fall below the regular on-campus cost. The department offers motivated students the possibility to live in the Max Kade German House (nine undergraduate students and one graduate student director). The quaint nineteenth-century house was renovated extensively with the help of a generous grant from the Max Kade Foundation. While in the house, students communicate in German. The house is also a popular site for lectures, film showings, German television evenings, and parties. In addition, graduate students organize a weekly Kaffeestunde (coffee hour) for undergraduate students, and undergraduate students have organized a German Club that features a variety of activities. Every second or third year, graduate and undergraduate students have combined their talents to put on a major theater production in German. Departmental Mission and Faculty Discussion The department s most recent review resulted in changes that had a profound effect on the undergraduate curriculum, advising, and the scheduling of courses. Most helpful during this review were the comments solicited through exit surveys from graduates of the program and comments compiled from questionnaires completed by undergraduate students. As a result of the review, the department has given greater attention to the scheduling of its major courses to ensure that required courses are offered in a regular, predictable sequence and that the availability of these courses and special topics offerings are advertised widely each quarter through posters and flyers sent to the college s advisement services and on the departmental Web pages. Another initiative, which was brought forward from the last departmental review, was a total revision of the curriculum and instructional materials for the department s self-paced individualized instruction program for introductory and intermediate German to bring them up to date and to make them congruent with the classroom instructional option. Phase 1 of this project has been completed for German 101 and 103; German 104 will follow, with the next phase of the planned project to include more online and distance-oriented components. Since the implementation of these revised materials, enrollment and retention in the individualized program have increased. We believe that the individualized option will become even more attractive to students who require flexible scheduling and to those who desire special emphasis in a domain or skill area (the latter category includes students who have special learning problems as well as students who desire to place special emphasis on a skill or interest area beyond that required by the basic curriculum). German Undergraduate Degree Programs In what amounts to a major reform effort, the department instituted two separate tracks for the German major: the language and literature and the language and culture concentrations. Both tracks provide language training toward a minimum of upper

4 106 Reports from the Project Models of Good Practice intermediate lower advanced proficiency levels, and both programs expose the student to a basic course of German culture and history. The concentrations differ in that the language and literature track is more heavily weighted toward literary survey courses and is recommended for students intending to pursue an advanced degree in German or other humanities field. The language and culture track, the choice of the overwhelming majority of our students, provides further language training, including advanced courses in stylistics and pronunciation, and affords students the opportunity to further their goals. Elective courses taken in other departments (such as English, linguistics, or women s studies) are an integral part of our undergraduate programs. We seem to have been successful in attracting a type of student who, while highly motivated to learn the language and to learn about contemporary Germany, was put off by the more traditional aspects of our curriculum, in particular the three levels of literature courses we offer at the 200, 400, and 500 levels. Enrollment in these courses has suffered as a result of the reorganization. Nearly half of our majors participate in one of our study-abroad programs at some point in their undergraduate careers. This, again, has somewhat hurt our upper-division enrollments, since students who spend a semester or year at Bonn University, our partner institution, return with a large amount of credit. We have changed the rules to ensure that students return to the department for at least one senior-level course and reenter the mainstream. In this way we can assess their proficiency levels, and through shared classroom activity and discussion they can enrich the experience of students who do not have the opportunity and resources to study abroad. Most of our majors now list German as their second major, their first major ranging from English to natural resource management. In conversation many of these students say that they had not intended to take a German degree when they entered the university but that they found the lower-level German courses, taught by a highly motivated group of graduate teaching associates, an engaging and pleasant contrast to other, less personalized, course work. In the past few years, we have experienced a surge in students who wish to double-major in German and international business, a combination that is encouraged through an arrangement between the Arts and Sciences and Business Schools, which waive some general education requirements that do not overlap. As a result, two relatively new business German courses at the 200 and 300 levels have attracted strong enrollments. We have improved our tracking of students who minor in German and have encouraged them to see a departmental adviser early on, even though the requirements are fairly simple and can be gleaned from the Web. Once these students have heard about the various programs and requirements, they are more likely to switch to the major program in or around their third year. These efforts have further strengthened enrollments in our German-major programs. Finally, the department has recently overhauled its advising system. In the past a faculty member was in charge of all undergraduate advising but never stayed in the assignment long enough to see a group of students through the program from beginning to end. Our new system distributes the advising duties through the entire departmental faculty. A coordinating adviser makes the first contact and sees potential majors and minors. Once enrolled, the student is assigned to a faculty adviser, ideally someone with matching interests or personality, who remains the primary adviser until the student graduates. The relationship between professor and student is thus more stable and more personal, and the individual faculty member s advising load is less onerous. It remains to be seen whether this change will affect our enrollments or graduation rates. Following the changes to our major requirements, we resolved some problems of course sequencing in the major (repetition of content in the language core courses; inconsistency in challenge level in these courses) and addressed the need to integrate a meaningful content sequence with principled and continuous language development (our composition and conversation series). After much debate, we decided to structure the content of this course sequence historically, beginning with the twentieth century (201), then the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (301), leaving content materials from periods before 1750 for 401. We realize that course and curricular development is an ongoing process. We are still looking for ways to make our offerings more relevant to our student population s needs and to keep them in line with what our current faculty can reasonably offer. To ensure healthy enrollments in our senior seminar and other 500-level courses taught in German, we have begun to restructure them as undergraduate and graduate courses at the 600 level. The courses will mark the capstone for the undergraduate majors and serve as a bridge course for our novice graduate students. As part of a college-wide

5 Ohio State University 107 attempt to improve and simplify curricular planning for students, we have also taken measures to communicate more clearly our course offerings by removing book courses that have not been offered in recent years. Curriculum and Teaching For the past several years, we have had good success with our introductory classroom courses, which focus primarily on the development of communicative language skills and cultural awareness and competence. Although linguistic structure and the development of accuracy play an important role in this process, it is a supporting role, in the service of skill and knowledge building. We make every effort to integrate current authentic materials, such as videos, CDs, the Web, and an online virtual audio lab, to keep the courses fresh and up to date. The introductory and intermediate courses of our language requirement sequence are taught almost exclusively by graduate teaching associates. At Ohio State, TAs assume full responsibility for planning, delivering, and assessing instruction within the curricular guidelines of the program, which stress the development of communicative and cultural skills through contextualized and communicative frameworks. As in many large, multisection programs, our university's TAs develop departmental tests and assessments as a shared responsibility, and they are encouraged to work cooperatively in the development and sharing of teaching materials. Since we consider our basic language courses our bread-and-butter courses, the department puts an unusual amount of financial and personnel resources into TA preparation and supervision. Formal preparation of new TAs consists of a two-week, intensive preservice workshop offered through the College of Humanities and conducted jointly by specialists from the language departments and the university's foreign language center. In this hands-on workshop, which TAs receive a stipend to attend, they are exposed to daily one-hour lectures on various aspects of language learning and teaching and engage in daily videotaped cross-language peer teaching experiences, supervised and facilitated by workshop faculty members. Afternoon sessions are devoted to work in cohorts specific to the languages and the curricula of the department in which they will be teaching. The preservice experience is followed by the first-quarter graduate seminar, German 840 College Teaching of German. These formal experiences are supplemented by weekly staff meetings organized by course and by classroom supervision conducted by the program director and by qualified program assistants. The undergraduate language program director receives a fifty percent course reduction for the administrative, advising, and teaching responsibilities associated with the position and, in addition, receives one and a half GA lines to assist with program and supervisory duties. We have revamped our business German sequence and increased the credit hours from three to five to follow the goals of the Goethe-Institute s Zertifikat Deutsch für den Beruf and to lead to optional certification through the internationally recognized Prüfung Zertifikat Deutsch für den Beruf. The department has supported students qualified to take this test (for which we have become a test center) by offering financial assistance from a special fund initiated by faculty members. This course sequence attracts a number of students who are double majors in German and business, economics, or international studies and students who are taking German as a minor to strengthen their majors in these areas. We have been working with Ohio State s Center for International Business Education and Research to increase collaboration on international internships, events for undergraduates and graduates (including an evening tutorial for MBA students). Technological Resources Technology and media have become an integral part of many of our courses for instance, in our business courses, our pronunciation course, our core German culture course, and in many of our general education offerings taught in English. Technological resources include audio and video materials and CDs; access to online film clips and exercises; access to important audio and video texts, Web-based exercises, and resource links to current events and tools; access to online audio and class materials. All basic language sequence courses make use of online digital audio lab (the development of the lab was supported by a faculty innovator grant); this has become a popular way for students to practice. Ohio State has increased the availability of multimedia classrooms; currently the rooms are used by TAs once a week to show videos or use presentation software for displaying images. Students find the online materials provided by individual instructors Web sites useful (we teach TAs how to make Web sites, and they each

6 108 Reports from the Project Models of Good Practice have their own Web space to post daily assignments and so on). The Web pages in and for individualized instruction display all relevant course documentation (syllabi, policies, study guides for tests, useful links) and are constantly updated by the program director. Teacher Education Some of our BAs and some of our MAs switch over to foreign language education in the College of Education and receive an MEd degree and teacher certification. It has been our experience that our MA students in particular turn out to be the most soughtafter teachers in the area and have no problems finding employment. Articulation between departments and area high schools has improved in recent years, thanks to CAAP, sponsored by Ohio State s Foreign Language Resource Center. Bernd Fischer Table 1 Fall Enrollments by Language, Ohio State University German Introductory sequence Advanced courses Majors Yiddish Introductory sequence Swedish Introductory sequence Table 2 Foreign Language Faculty Members, Ohio State University, 2001 Full-Time Graduate Tenure Full-Time Part- Student Track Nontenure Time TAs German Yiddish 2 2 Swedish 1