The Associated Students of Madison University Affairs Committee was successful in its final campaign of the semester, expanding language certificates to include Russian, Italian and East Central European Languages.
Previously, students could only earn language certificates in French and German, and a Spanish certificate is available only through admittance in the business school.
Professor and Chair of the Department of Slavic Languages & Literature Karen Evans-Romaine said multiple steps are required to create a language certificate.
The department interested in forming the certificate must plan and vote on the idea, followed by approval of the College Curriculum Committee, College Academic Planning Council and University Academic Planning Council.
“It’s a multi-step process that involves lots of feedback, lots of discussion, lots of chances to discuss to try and make any language certificate as strong as it can be,” Evans-Romaine said.
Two certificates are in different stages within the Slavic Language Department: the Central and Eastern European Language, Literature and Culture certificate and the Russian certificate. Both are expected to be implemented by 2016.
Outgoing University Affairs Committee Chair John Paetsch and incoming chair Angelito Tenorio said they hope the campaign will allow students to become multilingual without having to commit to a major, according to an ASM release.
“We look forward to engaging more students on this issue and expanding our efforts to create certificates in all languages offered at UW-Madison,” Paetsch said in the release.
ASM University Affairs intern Kate Wiedel originally formed the campaign and said she is glad the effort put in by the committee paid off.
“I am very happy with our progress and hope to target more languages next year to create certificates in all the languages offered at UW-Madison,” Wiedel said in the release.
Evans-Romaine said she was happy with the amount of student involvement in the language certificate process.
“In this case, since there was such a strong initiative from the Associated Students of Madison, the impetus... came from the students, which I think is a wonderful thing,” Evans-Romaine said.
