Russian Enrollments

[Marc Robinson]

Greetings - the numbers I sent for St. Olaf are for a college of around
3000.  We have a culture here that supports languages, so that helps.

Also, our Registrar, after input from departments and programs like ours
made a conscious decision not to do pre-arrival registration.  That has
helped tremendously.

We also have very few heritage speakers (why would they not want to come to
a small, traditionally Norwegian-Lutheran college? :)  )

For some reason we've been able to maintain our numbers (тфу-тфу-тфу).  We
actually feel more burdened right now with teaching classes with 20 people
in them.  It is still better than spending so much effort to get students to
enroll and stick with the language.

Marc Robinson
St. Olaf College.



On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 1:55 PM, Julie de Sherbinin <jwdesher at colby.edu>wrote:

> Dear Seelangers,
>
> Thanks for the Lewis & Clark information.
>
> I¹m impressed by the high enrollments in Russian at so many
> institutions.  I¹d like to speak up on behalf of liberal arts colleges
> in rural locations (many of us!) who aren¹t doing so well.  We
> have 1.8 FTE in Russian. College enrollment is 1800.
>
> This year¹s enrollment is typical of the kinds of ups and downs
> we experience:
> 1st year        7
> 2nd year    11
> 3rd year        3 (one in Russia)
> 4th year        5
> We have five senior Russian majors and three minors,
> but that won¹t be the case for the classes of Œ13 and Œ15.
>
> What does the picture look like at other small colleges?
> The factors that seem to be at play here:
> * Very few heritage speakers.
> * Pre-arrival registration means Œadvertising¹ doesn¹t work
> * A campus culture of conformity
> * Student worries that Russian will penalize their GPA
>
> How do y¹all do it?
>
> Julie de Sherbinin
> Colby College
> Waterville, Maine
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
>
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