The goal of the Languages Across the Curriculum (LAC) program at Auburn University, housed in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, within the College of Liberal Arts, is to prepare students for the cross-cultural and multi-lingual demands of a global economy. Since 2004, students have been offered the opportunity to enroll simultaneously in content courses, taught in English, such as History, Philosophy, Art, Music and in LAC sections in Spanish, French, Italian, and German. The program promotes interdisciplinary collaborations and continues to explore innovative research and pedagogy. It is an integral part of the internationalization plan of the College which, in recognition of the growing importance of global awareness and commitment, launched, in 2011, the Global Citizenship Project, within its Community and Civic Engagement Initiative.
*BALDWIN WALLACE UNIVERSITY‘s Mission Statement calls for preparing students to become global citizens. Faculty began a Language Across the Curriculum program in 2003-04 by including course-embedded options which allow students to use foreign language skills for research, writing or speaking as a part of a regular course which is taught in English. 50-60 students involved in these LAC options each year. BWU also promotes intercultural competency through an interdisciplinary International Studies major and a Diversity Studies minor.
*BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY is home to one of the longest-lived LAC programs in the nation. Since 1991, LxC has supported over 5,000 students in more than 300 courses in 14 different languages. BU’s new Global Studies Minor underscores the importance of intercultural competencies and the cultural content of all disciplines. The GSM works with the Office of International Programs to integrate study abroad, language learning/use and internationally-oriented courses.
Chestnut Hill College is a small Liberal Arts college located in Philadelphia PA with a strong commitment to Global Education across the curriculum. Since its founding in 1924 by the Sisters of St. Joseph, it has emphasized study abroad, international awareness, and service to all people. In an effort to train globally-minded citizens for the 21st century, the Department of Foreign Language and Literature instituted a CLAC program in 2016 with the help of a Title VI grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Students in the program complete one or more assigned readings or projects in at least two non-language classes using their foreign language (French, German, Italian, Latin, Russian, or Spanish). After a follow-up activity in English, such as a report, a presentation, or participation in a class discussion, they receive a certificate, which will further their careers and deepen their understanding of other cultures and peoples.
Through its FLAC program, Colgate University seeks to create an international ethos for the liberal arts by expanding the range of curricular settings in which students and professors can develop and use foreign language skills. Beyond the foreign language departments, faculty in various departments and programs encourage the use of foreign language materials in their curricula, and certain courses – such as literature in translation – offer FLAC sections in which students can engage with the material in the relevant foreign language. FLAC gives students the opportunity to expand their foreign language skills and/or to experiment with new languages. FLAC sections thus offer a framework for curricular initiatives that not only improve the foreign language competencies of students, but also demonstrate the necessary and critical value of foreign languages in understanding today’s world.
CORNELL UNIVERSITY‘s Languages Across the Curriculum (LAC) Program provides a guided, academic setting in which students with intermediate or higher foreign language skills read and discuss topics from a main ‘parent’ course in the designated language. LAC courses are special optional courses attached as co-requisites to non-language courses. Credit for LAC participation (typically 1 credit-hour) is awarded independently of the main course. LAC courses link content knowledge with language acquisition, offer insights into different cultures and area studies, provide experiences of analyzing texts in their original language, deepen technical and content-specific vocabulary, and support study abroad and other meaningful international experiences. LAC courses offer unique enrichment opportunities for students with the requisite language competence and can be a valuable supplement to regular curricular offerings in virtually any department or field. Cornell currently offers LAC courses in 14 languages: Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin (conversational), Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Yoruba. These courses are offered by over 20 departments in seven colleges/schools: Architecture, Art, and Planning; Arts and Sciences; Agriculture and Life Sciences; Business; Human Ecology; Industrial and Labor Relations; and Law.
As an intellectual community, DENISON UNIVERSITY’s vitality lies in inquiry and exploration—in consistently seeking out new understandings and points of view. Knowledge of foreign languages provides cultural and linguistic concepts and contexts that open up new vistas on what it can mean to be human, allowing for a profound redefinition of culture that can cross all classrooms. At its core, our commitment to educating our students to become “autonomous thinkers, discerning moral agents and active citizens of a democratic society,” speaks to our responsibility to create global citizens empowered with the tools to support their goals of civic engagement.
DRAKE UNIVERSITY‘s World Languages and Cultures Program actively seeks to integrate the content of students’ major and minor areas with their linguistic skills and cultural understanding. The “Certificate of Competence in Language and Culture” requires students to complete various tasks while studying abroad, tasks that are outside of the language classroom experience. Once students return from study abroad, they demonstrate their competence in a capstone course by writing a paper about an aspect of their major area of study in the target language. World Languages and Cultures also offers courses such as “Multicultural Health” and “Spanish for Healthcare Providers.” The Program is proactively pursuing connections to offer LAC sections with various departments throughout the University.
DUKE UNIVERSITY‘s language departments offer a wide array of courses that span the arts, humanities, and the professions. Our CLAC initiative expands upon these offerings by embedding innovative programming in languages other than English across our campus. Since 2013, we have offered .5 credit courses in 8 languages in our schools of Global Health, Environmental Science, and Public Policy. Hallmarks of Duke’s CLAC program include meaningful community engaged learning with native and heritage speakers, reflective practices that ask students to consider how language and culture impact their worldview, the development of discourse competence, and critical thinking around the intersections of language, culture, and real-world problems.
GETTYSBURG COLLEGE’s Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum program serves as a pillar of focused efforts to promote and sustain internationalization initiatives throughout the curriculum. The program, officially instituted in the fall of 2013, is currently articulated to allow students to use their non-English language skills to conduct research, write papers, and deliver presentations or performances in either English or a non-English language. This embedded model aims to enrich intercultural and linguistic competency beyond traditional courses taught within a language department. In this manner, the program seeks to bridge competencies among the faculty in order to help students broaden their awareness of global cultures, languages, and current issues in international affairs.
CLAC at ILLINOIS COLLEGE is centered in the efforts of the Department of Modern Languages to encourage students to apply their learning about languages and cultures across the curriculum. Through independent research, team-taught courses, and hybrid courses, students make connections between their language and cultural study and other disciplines such as Biology, Sociology, Environmental Science, Economics, Communications, History, and International Studies. These connections allow students to use their language skills for internships and study abroad/advanced research in these disciplines. The Department of Modern Languages has also implemented a special 1-credit research add-on course, where students can add additional credits to any course in the curriculum, provided they use their foreign language skills to conduct part of their research and then present that research to the professor and their fellow students. In the Illinois College BLUEprint general education program, students are required to make an explicit connection between their foreign language course requirement and another non-language course in the curriculum. Illinois College’s application of CLAC principles is an effective way to make foreign language education relevant to students’ professional lives.
RESIDENTIAL COLLEGE in the ARTS and HUMANITIES at MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY. In 2013, the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities (RCAH) at Michigan State University initiated a Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum (CLAC) program. World language proficiency, both as an essential vehicle for fostering understanding and respect for the cultural values and norms of different peoples and as a valuable skill for communication, research, and employment in today’s world, is a primary goal for RCAH students. Integrated Language Options (ILOs), conducted entirely in a world language, constitute the core elements of the RCAH CLAC program. The topic of an ILO is student-initiated, stemming from a question that originates in an RCAH course. Students work collaboratively, with other students, their language mentor, and/or community partners, on a semester-long project. ILOs are woven throughout the curriculum and, thus, throughout a student’s career in the RCAH. An RCAH Certification of Language Proficiency has been created and is awarded to students who fulfill the program requirements, which include completing a specified number of ILOs and language courses, compiling a language portfolio, and passing the newly developed RCAH Test of Language Proficiency.
Mount Holyoke College has a long tradition of promoting languages and cultures, as we were one of the first to require the study of languages in the US, starting in 1839. Today, many departments and programs at MHC offer courses which explore – from their respective disciplinary vantage points – different dimensions of globalization and analyze issues and challenges whose scope transcends national boundaries. Students have the opportunity to study eleven languages, five offering living language learning communities (Chinese, French, German, Italian, Spanish) which provide an environment of immersion and cooperative learning. We are in the process of developing a CLAC program on campus as a way to combine the numerous international resources that we have and to help ensure that we achieve our global initiative objectives. With the Language Resource Center as possible hub to the program, our goal is to spread the importance of acquiring language and cultural skills not only as a complement to other careers but rather as a vital component of creating global citizens.
OBERLIN COLLEGE : Oberlin’s Languages Across the Curriculum Initiative (LxC) is based on a simple but significant objective: to broaden the engagement of language departments and foreign language learning with the wider campus by encouraging the integration of work in languages other than English into courses whose subject matter touches on those areas of the world where such languages are spoken (e.g., Spanish in a course on Latin American Politics; French in a course on French history). The initiative grew out of Oberlin’s 2005 Strategic Plan—which specified the internationalization of the curriculum as a key institutional priority—and on-going discussions within the field of language pedagogy on a broader level. LxC seeks to internationalize the curriculum by creating concrete opportunities for students and faculty to employ and improve their language skills meaningfully in a larger number of courses that are currently available to them.
The Department of Modern Languages at Ohio Northern University offers students with abundant opportunities to learn to speak, understand, read, and write other languages. We offer courses that facilitate students to communicate with another culture on its own terms, through its cultural spectrum of people, literature, history, and experience. We offer majors and minors in German, French, and Spanish and also individualized courses in Russian and Arabic. We collaborate with the Study Abroad office of the university to provide short-term and long-term programs in Germany, Costa Rica, Chile, Argentina, Spain, and France. We are restructuring the curriculum and developing new courses and enhance existing courses with outcomes that can assess their global competence. We are exploring possibilities of developing languages across the curriculum framework, and we are still in the incipient phase.
Rutgers University’s Language Engagement Project (LEP) takes an innovative approach to language learning. Housed in the Language Center, the project spearheads a series of curricular initiatives that fosters the creation of 1-credit interdisciplinary Language Modules, attached to 3-credit courses in subjects ranging from History to Chemistry, in collaboration with our Language Departments and programs. These modules explore the relevance of specific languages to the contents of the fields themselves, and/or to the cultures of the people involved in these fields. The LEP also encourages the creation of 1-credit 991 Courses designed to reflect on second language learning; on what it feels like to encounter another language; on what it means to think in more than one language; on the myriad ways in which languages interact with culture. In this spirit, the Project supports the addition of language courses to all Study Abroad programs based in countries where a language other than English is spoken; and to innovative Study Away programs reaching out to language communities here in the United States – in New Jersey particularly. Finally, the LEP inspires 1-credit language activities, which are a form of peer-to-peer learning. Students receive credit for participating in 1) Language Exchanges – two students “swap” their respective competences in two different languages, including English, 2) Language Mentoring – a student more advanced in a particular language tutors a less advanced one; both receive credit, and 3) Language In-Service – student activities involving outreach to and/or immersion in communities using languages other than English. The Language Engagement Project strives not only to honor this amazing diversity, but also to give it a prominent, unprecedented role both in student life and in academics. Its fundamental goal is to embrace and nurture the language culture(s) of Rutgers students, whether they are heritage speakers, native speakers from other countries, or new learners of languages entirely different from their own. Ultimately, the LEP will create a rich “Culture of Language” that is central to all aspects of Rutgers.
SKIDMORE COLLEGE offers students a unique model of LAC which allows each student to select the target course for reading in the foreign language. Faculty in Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures offer LAC sections in 6 languages at both the intermediate (1-credit) and advanced levels (2-credit). Students use their language skills to conduct research for papers and presentations on topics related to their chosen target course taken concurrently in English. The LAC program serves a wide spectrum of students and is a requirement for International Affairs majors.
STOCKTON UNIVERSITY places a strong emphasis on internationalizing the campus. The CLAC program at Stockton University is in the initial stage. Combining language and content learning, various CLAC activities have been proposed and implemented to help students build interconnections with the local and global worlds, and contribute their knowledge to meet the needs, and thus develop better understandings of themselves and the world through interactions at various levels.
The College of New Jersey: Languages Across the Curriculum (LAC) is a curricular enrichment program that provides students with the opportunity to use their skills in languages other than English in non-language courses. It aims to infuse foreign language across the curriculum, thus building on the skills of language proficient students in courses where authentic foreign language sources are not a regular component of the curriculum but would complement the course material. Thus, students can extend their knowledge of a second language beyond foreign language courses and apply those skills to course materials, research, and projects in non-language disciplines. In addition, the inclusion of authentic course-relevant source materials in another language enriches course perspectives and prepares students more fully for the cross-cultural and multilingual demands of a global society. Students at TCNJ may enroll in a LAC 391 independent study linked to a course in another field. The LAC independent study is directly related to an existing course in English but grants an additional credit for work conducted in a second language that supports and enhances the focus of the original course.
TRINITY UNIVERSITY‘s Languages Across the Curriculum (LAC) program provides an avenue for students to apply their language skills in fields not traditionally the focus of modern language department curricula. Students learn the vocabulary, terminology, and concepts used in academic or professional disciplines in the target language and also read from scholarly or professional works published in that language. Students are eligible to take LAC courses after they have completed the language’s second semester, second-year course or have achieved equivalent proficiency in their chosen language. Enrollment in an appropriate course provides practice in using professional and academic Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish in special courses in the humanities and social and natural sciences.
Some LAC courses are coordinated with existing upper-division courses that are taught in English, and students may enroll in both. Other LAC courses are taught separately as “stand-alone” courses. All LAC courses make extensive use of the target foreign language and most use it as the medium of instruction.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: The Languages Across the Curriculum (LxC) Program at the University of Chicago is a College initiative coupling additional language-focused sessions with courses at the undergraduate level across the disciplines. It aims to offer students the opportunity to use their foreign language skills in a variety of courses outside the language and literature curricula, thus promoting intercultural competence and interdisciplinary opportunities. In the LxC sessions, students access texts and other resources about the course content in a foreign language. Through this additional engagement with the language, students broaden their knowledge of the subject matter, improve their language skills, and deepen their understanding of the course content in relation to the foreign culture.
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER: The Center for Asian Studies (CAS) was established in 1999 to advance knowledge of Asia through undergraduate and graduate education, faculty research, and outreach programs for the broader community. The Center is committed to managing and expanding the interdisciplinary major in Asian Studies by providing student fellowships, scholarships, and study abroad opportunities; investing in faculty research and professional development; providing support for building Asia-related resources on the CU Boulder campus; developing academic exchanges with Asia-based colleagues and students; and engaging the local community with Asia-related programs and events. The Center also serves to promote the University’s Flagship 2030 Initiative to ‘Build a Global Crossroads’ by internationalizing education on campus and promoting Asia in the context of global studies. In partnership with the Anderson Language Technology Center (ALTEC), CAS is working to establish a CLAC pilot program, which will provide opportunities for students to use their Japanese and Chinese language skills outside of the language classroom and in conjunction with Asia-specific disciplinary courses in which they are enrolled. In order to more broadly integrate language and content courses, we anticipate a series of one-credit CLAC courses that are paired with selected content courses in various departments.
The University of Denver (DU) began a pilot Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum (CLAC) program in 2015 through the Center for World Languages & Cultures. With a first-year language requirement and 70% of the undergraduate population participating in study abroad, CLAC offers a multitude of opportunities for students to integrate their language learning across the disciplines both before and after they study abroad, as well as for those students who do not study abroad. The focus of the one-credit classes is mastery of content incorporating the perspectives and knowledge particular to different languages and cultures. CLAC is a key component to building intercultural competencies and DU’s internationalization strategy.
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The UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, which affirms the centrality of international concerns as part of its basic strategic positioning for the 21st century, initiated LAC courses in the 1990s. Faculty developed considerable expertise in LAC for Spanish, French and German, as well as foreign language immersion options. Presently, University of Minnesota’s Title VI National Resource Centers and Language Resource Center are working collaboratively with the academic departments to support language learning initiatives to revitalize LAC options.
The UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL UNC’s Languages Across the Curriculum (LAC) Program offers students the opportunity to use world languages in a variety of courses outside the language and literature curricula. The program aims to promote a better understanding of world regions while demonstrating the relevance of practical language skills across the disciplines. Since 1996, we’ve offered LAC course options (one-hour discussion sections in a variety of formats, research components, and three-hour seminars) in eight languages for over 40 courses in more than 20 departments across campus. We also offer an annual professional development workshop in partnership with Duke University.
The UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH’s Languages Across the Curriculum (LAC) Program offers students the opportunity to use world languages in courses offered in a variety academic disciplines, including those outside of languages and literature. The program aims to provide a curricular framework to develop and apply language and intercultural competences within all disciplines. It is based upon the belief that languages and intercultural perspectives promote a better and more nuanced understanding of content in any course. It aims to promote a better understanding of world regions while demonstrating the relevance of practical language skills across the disciplines. The University Center for International Studies (UCIS), with funding from Pitt’s Title VI National Resource Centers, has embarked on a four year initiative to increase the number of LAC courses offered on campus. Currently, three Title VI National Resource Centers support the development of new LAC courses: the Asian Studies Center (ASC), the European Studies Center (ESC), and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (REEES). The initiative also receives support from the African Studies Program, Global Studies Center, and Center for Latin American Studies. Presently, students apply their second language skills in French, Italian, German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian to the study of academic content in fields such as Anthropology, History, Art History, Film Studies, Literatures, and Environmental Science. In the future, the program will expand to more languages and other disciplines.
The Language Across the Curriculum (LAC) program at the UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND offers a variety of sections that are tied to primary courses throughout the curriculum, including classes in the arts and sciences, leadership studies, business, and continuing studies. At Richmond, LAC sections are small language discussion groups led by faculty members well-versed in a second language or by students with a high proficiency level in a second language. Besides offering a variety of sections in commonly taught languages such as Spanish, French, and German, Richmond’s LAC program currently includes LAC courses in Turkish, Hindi, and Czech.
The University of Utah’s Cultures & Languages Across the Curriculum Program is a collaborative effort between the Center for Latin American Studies and the Asia Center, both Title VI National Resource Centers, and departments across campus. Initiated with a Title VI Undergraduate International & Foreign Language (UISFL) grant in 2013, the program advances the University of Utah’s mission to educate responsible global citizens. It promotes the value of cross-cultural and linguistic competencies to students across disciplines, acknowledging and validating in particular the intercultural skills that diverse students bring to the University. It provides students the opportunity to build on language skills learned in the home, in K-12 classrooms, and through experiences living abroad. CLAC courses provide a forum for students from a variety of backgrounds to learn from each other, and foster understanding among different cultures. Presently, students apply their second language skills in Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese or Spanish to the study of academic content in fields such as Art History, Comparative Literature, History, Sociology and Political Science. In the near future, the program will expand to European languages (German and French) and also Middle East languages, in addition to other disciplines.
Wesleyan University’s CLAC program is administered out of the Fries Center for Global Studies, and aims to provide students and faculty across the campus with opportunities to deepen their engagement with their subjects through the use and further development of their language and intercultural skills. CLAC courses at Wesleyan can be linked to an English-medium course or standalone, and students can earn either 0.25 or 0.5 credits (1 or 2 semester hours) depending on the expected level of out-of-class preparation and assignments. Wesleyan’s CLAC program began in January of 2019 and to-date, courses have been offered in Ancient Greek, Chinese (Mandarin), German, Hebrew, Korean, Latin, Russian, and Spanish.
Wittenberg University‘s program is two-tiered. Second-year language courses in French, German, Russian, and Spanish help students develop language skills by foregrounding interdisciplinarity through the study of themes ranging from the natural environment to contemporary political and cultural issues. Chinese and Japanese also introduce these themes in the second-year in more traditional intermediate courses. Building on this foundation, students in the second year of study can enroll for Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum modules in a wide variety of disciplines ranging from International Studies to Theatre to Physics. In the CLAC modules, students develop projects and work with experts in the discipline they are studying and with faculty in the Languages Department. Their projects are integrated into the primary content course and enable students to use their knowledge of a second language to make a genuine contribution to their chosen field of study.
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