Our Learning Community will not meet during the summer, but feel free to send along new/interesting resources (e.g., webinars, articles) and ideas for future sessions! We may send out newsletters over the summer, especially if time-sensitive opportunities arise! 

Speaking of interesting resources, ACTFL just offered a webinar by Dr. Benjamin Rifkin entitled "The Crises in US Higher Education and Proactive Advocacy Strategies for Language & Lit Programs: Adapt or Die," which covered a lot of similar topics that we did in our learning community! If you are an ACTFL member, you should be able to access the recording of the webinar and his supplemental materials.

May 19th Learning Community

This small group session focused on sharing some materials and engaging in discussion. 

• Emily shared an example of a SEMP (Strategic Enrollment Management Plan) and supplemental materials developed by J. Victor McGlone at Perimeter College at Georgia State University
  • “A SEMP is a map or chart that guides an institution with enrollment management. This plan assigns projects or tasks to responsible parties, outlines meetings, establishes goals, and provides for evaluation.”
• Discussion about AI tools and the value of language learning
  • ThuyAnh N. shared an article about AI that she found recently (risk assessments for different AI tools from CommonSense Media)
  • Mia L. – at University of Michigan, they’re working on a chatbot that can give students a recommendations of different languages.
  • Discussion of using AI tools as language partners, maybe using it for self-assessment
• Scott S. talked about an assignment in one of his classes on Language Acquisition. As an assignment, the students needed to learn a new language, which inspired a lot of valuable course discussion.
• Idea of a “reverse flyer” – if you want to order food at a restaurant, you’re probably going to need to take this class, if you want the skills to do XYZ, then you’ll want to take these classes. Highlighting practical items from the can-do statements.

Don't forget: You can check out previous summaries and recordings of our 2024-2025 Thriving Language Programs Learning Community on the Learning Community Website.  

Are you interested in leading a session of our learning community at some point? 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 and invite any additional colleagues/speakers to participate. We could help with ideas for facilitation if desired. 

Please let us know if you would like to lead one of the learning community sessions in the future 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!