Slavic at Harvard

[Clancy, Steven]

Dear Klawa and SEELANGS,

I can respond to this as I know the situation on the ground well. We had a transition at Harvard this year on the occasion of Pat Chaput's upcoming retirement after many years of dedicated service to the Slavic Languages Program at Harvard and I've begun my first year here as the new Director of the Slavic Language Program after many years at the University of Chicago.

At Harvard, our first-year Russian enrollments doubled from 16 in Fall 2011-12 to 34 in Fall 2012-13, including the opening of a new course in the first-year level. And our intensive first-year course that repeats in the spring has enrolled another 14 students who started first-year in January. And that's simply the first-year level. We're also seeing growth in higher levels with more advanced students entering the program for various graduate and professional programs with an interest in Russian and also other Slavic languages. Undergraduates going abroad and returning for further study are also populating our upper-level classes. I hope to see these trends continue in coming years.

We had very good enrollments in recent years at University of Chicago in both Russian and Polish and I expect interest in Russian to continue to increase, both here at Harvard and throughout the US. It does seem that attracting students in other Slavic languages has become increasingly difficult in recent years, but I think sizable enrollments in all less commonly taught languages have been harder to achieve since the economic troubles began in 2008. Russian, however, seems strong and getting a bit stronger in my experience, establishing itself more firmly in the minds of undergraduates as a major "world language" among other languages such as Spanish, French, German, Arabic, and Chinese. I would like to see more data on this, but my sense is that students have largely gravitated towards a smaller group of world languages which certainly includes Russian, but are shying away from less commonly taught languages. For us in the Slavic field, it means we need to work harder to attract students to Czech, Polish, BCS, Bulgarian, etc. than we did in the nineties or the early 2000s.

It does seem quite possible to increase Polish enrollments through outreach to the heritage learner communities on many campuses and I hope we'll see upturns in the LCTLs as well, both within the Slavic world and more broadly. I have very much appreciated the linguistic diversity we've had on offer in the foreign language courses at the universities where I've worked.

How are enrollments across the board at other places? I'd be happy to provide more information off-list if anyone is interested.

All the best,

Steven

Steven Clancy
Senior Lecturer on Slavic Languages and Literatures
Director of the Slavic Language Program
Harvard University
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures

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