Charge to the Committee
The Language Council helps to further the goals of a Colgate education that students “read and speak a second language.” The council promotes the teaching of foreign languages, literatures and cultures, supports collaborative initiatives across departments and programs, and oversees any form of language study outside the purview of academic programs with foreign language course offerings. Individual language departments and programs retain control over their own areas and the approval of outside credit for courses taken in the languages taught within those departments. The Language Council has authority only in areas that fall outside normal departmental structures.
In the areas for which no single department has clear authority, the duties of the Language Council include:
- Implementing and overseeing mechanisms for granting university credit in language study undertaken off campus and online (including summer courses) that are attentive to Colgate’s academic standards and offered by individuals with appropriate pedagogical training and credentials.
- Providing support for exploring and monitoring opportunities for language courses undertaken on study groups.
- Advising the registrar’s office in the approval of language courses as transfer credit on approved programs.
- Overseeing the Less Commonly Taught Languages program that governs the developing of shared course initiatives with other institutional partners such as the New York Six and the development of independent courses in languages not offered by Colgate faculty.
- Approving Culture and Languages Across the Curriculum (CLAC) courses.
- Reviewing and approving and award Lampert summer language fellowships.
- Serving as a steering committee for the Keck Center for Language Study.
- Providing a forum for questions of mutual interest for language departments and programs.
Membership:
Members of the Language Council are appointed by the Dean of Faculty; the Language Council consists of faculty representatives from each foreign language programs (Arabic, Chinese, Classics, French, German, Hebrew*, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish). Ideally, faculty representatives should include the department chairs of EALL, ROLA, GERM, and CLAS and the Director of the Keck Center for Language Study. Ex-officio members include the Division Directors of UNST and AHUM and the Associate Dean of the Faculty for International Initiatives. The Language Council is co-chaired by the Keck Center Director and a member of the language faculty.
* May be substituted by a non-language teaching faculty member from JWST.