Russian language enrollement

[Benjamin Rifkin]

Dear SEELANGers:

I have responded to Ms. Hutchens directly (off-list) as President of
AATSEEL and I encourage all of you who have good enrollment news to
respond to her as well.

John Schillinger of American University has spoken about the need to
expand CCPCR (Committee on College and Pre-College Russian) Census
Data to include enrollments at the college level for just this
reason.  I am hoping that we can get such data in the future, but for
the moment, if you have good enrollment news to share, please do so!

Sincerely,

Ben Rifkin


>To whom it may concern:
>I am writing as a student from James Madison University in
>Harrisonburg, VA, and wanted to ask the SEELANG community for some
>information
>regarding Russian language enrollment (I have already contacted
>AATSEEL and was assured this was the best place to seek help).  JMU
>is
>trying to close our Russian Language and our
>Translation/Interpretation programs, two endeavors which the
>language and translation community
>feels set us apart from other universities in the area, (actually
>they have already decided to close these programs and let the
>faculty go, but we
>are vehemently fighting the decision),  The administration says that
>Russian enrollment nationwide is down, and for that reason Russian
>is not a
>necessary language to offer at JMU.  However, as the russnet.org web
>site indicates, enrollment went up in the '90's.  We don't really
>feel that the
>administration here values these programs enough, or even have the
>proper information to make a fair judgement.  If possible, could
>someone
>please write back to me in regards to the current situation of
>nationwide interest/enrollment in Russian programs?  We really do
>not want to see
>Russian disappear from our campus, since we feel that it remains a
>vital language in this age of globalization.  Thank you for your
>time,
>
>Jill Hutchens
>
>hutchejd at jmu.edu
>
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--
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Benjamin Rifkin

Professor of Slavic Languages, Slavic Dept., UW-Madison
1432 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706 USA
voice:  (608) 262-1623; fax: (608) 265-2814
http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/slavic/rifkin/


Director, Russian School, Middlebury College
Freeman International Center
Middlebury, VT 05753 USA
voice: (802) 443-5533; fax: (802) 443-5394
http://www.middlebury.edu/~ls/russian/

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