In October 2019, fifteen stakeholders of the Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum (CLAC) Consortium – institutional representatives and executive officers – gathered at the University of Chicago for the CLAC Summit 2019: Strategic Solutions in a Complex Landscape.  The aim of the summit was to re-examine the purpose and direction of the CLAC Consortium in light of contemporary challenges facing modern languages, the humanities, and U.S. higher education in general.

The Summit was a great success, and some of the highlighted outcomes are: 

Outcome 1: The definition of CLAC: 

CLAC is a curricular framework that provides opportunities to develop and apply language and intercultural competence within all academic disciplines through the use of multilingual resources and the inclusion of multiple cultural perspectives.

Outcome 2: The vision statement of CLAC Consortium:

CLAC Consortium’s vision is that multilingual and multicultural perspectives will inform all curricular and co-curricular practices in higher education, that the barriers between language learning and disciplinary learning will dissolve, that all students will have multiple opportunities to meaningfully use languages they know or are learning, and that institutions of higher education will value all languages as a means to access, generate, and disseminate knowledge.

Outcome 3: The Mission Statement of CLAC Consortium:

The CLAC Consortium helps faculty identify ways to incorporate diverse languages and cultures across academic disciplines, thereby enhancing the translingual and transcultural competence of their students. Through mentoring, workshops, conferences, and publications, the consortium supports programmatic development and alignment between CLAC and key institutional priorities. The consortium promotes the visibility of CLAC programs and advocates for the adoption of the CLAC framework across higher education.

Outcome 4: Four CLAC Consortium Working Groups: 

  • Research and Assessment 
  • “Shelter”: Collaboration with other organizations
  • Communications
  • Training

Outcome 5: A new CLAC leadership team: 

  • Interim Chair: JY Zhou, Stockton University 
  • Interim Vice Chair: Bernd Estabrook, Illinois College
  • Interim Secretary/Treasurer: William Pavlovich, Binghamton University

Published by CLAC Consortium