The vast number of foreign languages available for study at UW-Madison can be daunting for some students, which is why the Division of International Studies recently formed the Language Institute.
The Language Institute was formed last April \to be a unifying force and also a showcase for all of the languages,"" UW-Madison French professor and Language Institute director Sally Sieloff Magnan said.
UW-Madison offers over 60 world languages, including Hindi, Ojibwe, Quechua, Telugu, Yoruba and Yucatec Maya.
""[The language programs] have many opportunities to cooperate and share their activities and so this was created to do that,"" said Phil Certain, UW-Madison's retired Dean of the College of Letters and Sciences.
The Language Institute's goal is to help students interpret this vast amount of choices and also promote the exploration of world languages and cultures through academic programs and community-outreach initiatives.
""We'll have a variety of events that could cross language borders,"" Magnan said.
""Languages for Life,"" a series of lectures given by UW-Madison alumni who use languages in their careers and lives, and ""Voices of America,"" a series that discusses the various languages spoken in the United States, are two outreach initiatives implemented by the Language Institute.
In addition to the outreach programs, the Language Institute is also home to the interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Second Language Acquisition, ""which is something that has needed a sponsor and a home for a long time,"" said Mary Jo Studenberg, UW-Madison's Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute's program coordinator.
""How do you learn how to teach Vietnamese to people who aren't native speakers or how do you learn how to teach Indonesian to people who aren't speakers of Indonesian?"" Studenberg said of the Second Language Acquisition program. ""So, in the effort to explore and train teachers who then have that profession-that's a big, exciting thing.""
The interdisciplinary program has several different tracks, including second language analysis, use, process and learning, pedagogical theory and post-secondary instruction, according to UW-Madison's online Graduate School Catalog for 2002-'04.
A goal of Second Language Acquisition is to ""train future faculty for a field that has enjoyed much innovation and development and, with ever-increasing globalization, is expected to grow in the future,"" according to the Graduate School Catalog.
Outreach to businesses is another facet of the Language Institute.
""[The Language Institute] is trying to do more community outreach kinds of things, like providing translators for needs in the community,"" Studenberg said.
