FYI: New Middle East National Language Resource Center

[McGinnis, Scott]

New National Middle East Language Resource Center Announced

The U.S. Department of Education recently announced the creation of the National Middle East Language Resource Center, the first Title VI Language Resource Center to focus solely on the languages of the Middle East. The center will be headquartered at Brigham Young University and represents a consortium of language experts from more than twenty universities. Kirk Belnap, BYU associate professor of Arabic, will serve as the center's director.  The associate directors, each charged with primary oversight of one of the major languages of the region, are: Mahmoud Al-Batal (Arabic), Emory University; Shmuel Bolozky (Hebrew), the University of Massachusetts-Amherst; Erika H. Gilson (Turkish), Princeton University; Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak (Persian), University of Washington.

The center will work with the country's Middle East language professionals and  other Title VI centers to coordinate efforts aimed at increasing and improving opportunities for learning the languages of the Middle East.  The center will also undertake and support projects in areas such as teacher training, materials development, testing and assessment, integration of pedagogy and technology, study abroad, and K-12 programs.  It will work across the four Middle East language groups (as well as with smaller language fields, such as Kurdish) to foster cooperation and joint utilization of expertise and resources.

The center will begin by surveying the needs of each language field and then work closely with each to create a strategic plan to be implemented in stages.  A significant portion of the center's funds from the Department of Education will be used for its grants program.  These grants will serve as seed money to attract matching funds from other institutions and encourage broad field participation.  These grants will target the development of materials and programs that complement the center's other projects in building an integrated system of language learning support.