Five schools team up for Foreign Languages Institute

Buy-in from five local colleges and universities has opened the door for thousands of students to gain access to a broader range of language courses beginning in fall 2013.

Leaders from Missouri State, Drury, Evangel and Southwest Baptist universities and Ozarks Technical Community College came together for a Sept. 17 news conference during which administrators from each school signed memorandums of understanding to create the Foreign Languages Institute, with evening classes to be held at MSU’s Jim D. Morris Center in downtown Springfield.

The institute’s overarching goal is to prepare area college graduates to join the increasingly global workforce.

“As the world’s economy becomes increasingly competitive and connected, language training for Missouri’s workforce will become a major strategic asset. Southwest Missouri continues to undergo dramatic change. Population is growing, its economy is expanding, and the region is moving beyond the relative isolation of the past in order to engage more fully in an increasingly global society,” said MSU interim President Clif Smart, who was joined at the signing table by OTC Chancellor Hal Higdon, Evangel President Robert Spence, SBU President Pat Taylor and Charles Taylor, Drury vice president of academic affairs and dean, who represented Drury President Todd Parnell.

First and foremost, the institute will help students to bridge the gap with other cultures by expanding local opportunities to study languages from around the globe.

“The globe is getting smaller and smaller. Students must understand languages and must be able to speak them,” Taylor said.

Evangel’s Spence said the institute would give students access to more language study than the schools can offer individually. “All of our institutions do offer French and Spanish, and once we move beyond that, there are interests … in various languages, but being able to do it this way will help all of our students,” he said.

Smart said plans are for Portuguese and Italian to be the first two new languages rolled out at the institute, which also will offer additional sections in Chinese and Arabic for the participating universities that don’t offer those.

Smart said students at all five universities would be surveyed to determine other language demands.

According to the memorandums, students at Drury, Evangel and SBU will be charged their schools’ standard tuition rates and will reimburse MSU at its in-state resident tuition rate, which is roughly $200 per credit hour for the 2012–13 school year. Students at OTC, which generally has a lower tuition rate than MSU and the other schools, will pay varying per-credit-hour fees based on the number of students enrolled in a course. For example, according to the memorandum, if there are fewer than five students enrolled, the fee would be $90 multiplied by the number of credit hours, multiplied by the number of students.

During the news conference, Smart drew praise from the other administrators for taking the lead to establish the institute as a collaborative effort.

“There are other communities in this country, in this state, where a community college and private and public [institutions] would not speak, would not talk, would not visit – and they sure wouldn’t work together,” Higdon said. “This is unusual. … I think it’s important for us to remember that we live in a special place and a special part of the state where cooperation and collaboration are key.”

Drury’s Taylor said the private university takes its commitment to educating students for global citizenship seriously, and the language institute will be an important part of that effort. He characterized the institute as evidence that the five schools understand their shared responsibility to improve Springfield and the Ozarks.

“As we gain greater awareness of the difficulty of providing an outstanding higher education for every student who would like to have one, recognizing that we’re very different kinds of places, we will occasionally compete for students, but when it’s important to assure greater educational opportunities for all of our students … not only are we able to collaborate at the table, we’re excited to do so,” Taylor said.

Smart said the institute also will be an asset in promoting diversity and economic growth for the region and the state.

“We anticipate the market for this will be our own students from Missouri State and our partner universities, regional and state businesses, government agencies, the school districts and nonprofit organizations,” Smart said.