January 2025

The results are in! Thank you to everyone who filled out the survey to help us craft the future of this learning community. A total of 40 of the 49 people who responded said that we should continue the learning community with a similar format. Our next session will be February 4th – details and Zoom registration link below!  

We also will be working on a summary article (33 votes) to discuss and distribute.  

Respondents also indicated that that a discussion on research and research avenues (26 votes) would be of interest! (Maybe someone excited about that can lead our March or April session?? See below for details!) 

Accountability group  - about 25% of respondents were interested in an accountability group. Emily will reach out to those people who expressed interest to see if we could find a mutually agreeable time and then send that out to the larger group as well in case additional people would like to participate.  

Did you miss any of the previous sessions of the learning community? Find recaps of the previous sessions, videos, and links to our newsletters on the Thriving Language Programs webpage! 

Our next session of the Thriving Language Programs Learning Community will be held on Tuesday, February 4th at 3pm Eastern.  

NEW! Please register for the session and the Zoom link will be sent directly to you!  

We will discuss charting the trajectory of students in your program. 

**Item to prepare** Please have the links to the major and minor requirements and the related courses at your own institution available so that you can easily reference them during the discussion.  

Are you interested in leading a session of our learning community this semester? We will hold sessions of the learning community in March and April. Part of making this a true community is sharing the leadership of the sessions! 

Some ideas could include (from our survey): discussing research, enrollment, program revamp goals/steps, actions for programs with only minors or no majors/minors, surveys for students and/or alumni, ideas to reach out to other units, etc. 

You would craft the content, invite any additional colleagues/speakers to participate, and set the time of the session. We could help with ideas for facilitation if desired. We will set up the Zoom link and communicate about the session to all participants.  

Please let us know if you would like to lead one of the learning community sessions by emailing us and describe your proposed topic. 

• Language Program Vitality in the United States (edited volume on which this learning community is based) 
• Sharing Less Commonly Taught Languages in Higher Education: Collaboration and Innovation (edited volume with some “Solutions to Thrive”) 
• Article: How important is studying languages for undergraduate students and why (not) study languages? 
• Learning Community Website

If you have any information you would like to share with the rest of the community, please email us (Emily, Felix, Scott) and we will try to share it in our upcoming newsletters. We would love to include any stories of successful (and also unsuccessful) initiatives that you have tried. We could also share links to resources you want to share. We want this newsletter to be a place for our community to continue growing and thriving, so we would love to hear your voices as well!