Rise in Russian Enrollment Fall Semester

[Francoise Rosset]

FIRST, our answer to the original question is that we have twice as many
students as last year in Beginning Russian, 19 instead of 10, in a small
private lib arts college of approx. 1,600, so roughly like Sarah Lawrence.
BUT that's probably because we decided to open up a second section of
Russian-One, at a different time, and we got 8 and 12, now 8 and 11.
(German did it ten years ago and their increased enrollments still hold,
though their retention rate into second-year is not a "good" as ours.)
Oh, and my colleague and I are co-teaching that second section ... as an
overload. The jury's still out but it appears opening up another section
helps.
If anyone wonders, we get only 1-2 heritage students a year.

SECOND, I want to draw attention to what Walt did to keep more students in
second year. Clever, and he got results.

Here at Wheaton, we comb the schedule and check with other departments
(esp. History, Econ and PoliSci) to try and avoid conflicts with our
second-year and advanced classes. And we have on occasion changed our
schedule. For years we had an arrangement with Poli Sci that none of their
four Russian politics courses would be taught MWF, and we left TTh alone.
Then complications set in, but we still check with each other.
This term History checked with *us* before scheduling their Russian History
course !!!

Best,
-FR




On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 11:20 AM, Walt Richmond <richmond at oxy.edu> wrote:

>  At Occidental College, enrollments in first year Russian have been very
> slowly decreasing over the last three-four years. This year continues that
> trend. Second year has shown an increase, but that’s simply because I found
> a way to avoid a lot of course conflicts that kept interested students from
> continuing.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Walt Richmond
>
>
>  ------------------------------
>
> *From:* SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list
> [mailto:SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU] *On Behalf Of *Alina Israeli
> *Sent:* Thursday, September 19, 2013 7:42 AM
> *To:* SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU
> *Subject:* Re: [SEELANGS] Rise in Russian Enrollment Fall Semester
>
>
>
> At American the first 3 years are about the same, maybe a tiny bit smaller
> for Elementary, but at the higher levels a big surge this year, mostly due
> to the high number of heritage students. Also more graduate students than
> usual are taking Russian this fall.
>
>
>
> Elementary 54
>
> Intermediate 32
>
> Third year        15
>
> Translation      17
>
> Advanced grammar 8
>
>
>
>
>
> Alina Israeli
>
> Associate Professor of Russian
>
> WLC, American University
>
> 4400 Massachusetts Ave.
>
> Washington DC 20016
>
> (202) 885-2387    fax (202) 885-1076
>
> aisrael at american.edu
>
>
>

-- 
Françoise Rosset
Chair, Russian and Russian Studies
Wheaton College, Norton MA 02766
office:     508-286-3696
FAX #:     508-286-3640
frosset at wheatonma.edu

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