Don Rubin
Programs in English Education and Teaching Additional Languages (also Department of Speech Communication)
Department Member from 1978-2007
Measured by biblical epochs, a generation and a half have passed since I first came to UGA as a freshly minted assistant professor. When I arrived, one of the most common occupational hazards was the indelible stain of ditto-master Rexograph ink. Purple fingers were the mark of the diligent instructor cranking out (literally) the day’s handouts. It is entirely plausible that one of my current students could be the grandchild of a student I taught in my first years at UGA.
In one and one-half generations, UGA and COE have just about wandered out of the wilderness and find themselves approaching an extraordinarily promising land (barring unforeseen budget rescissions).
COE is now quite cosmopolitan. It was not so in 1978. I recall an early College faculty meeting in which one of my colleagues railed against a teacher assessment test which would require students to send their good hard currency “up North” to some out-of-state outfit (National Evaluation Systems, I believe) that was going to tell us whether our own “home grown Georgia student teachers” were any good or not.
COE is now adamantly committed to multiculturalism. It was not so in 1978. At my job interview a College official could tell me that he (there were no “she” College officials to interview me at that time) knew some “fine folks, neighbors and all, really fine folks” who were Jews.
COE is now centered on a mission of school improvement and teacher development. In 1978 “teacher education” was hardly a cutting edge concern at many colleges of education nation-wide. To its great credit, the Department of Language Education was making news—my departmental colleagues published journal articles about it--by adopting the innovation of “field centers,” in which a substantial amount of disciplinary coursework was delivered to teacher candidates in groups at public school sites rather than on campus. I myself spent several quarters (yes, quarters) driving to Cobb County schools to teach linguistics and language study to UGA English Education undergrads. Since gasoline prices had just risen above $1.00 per gallon in 1980, you can imagine that travel reimbursement for these field centers was not an inconsequential consideration.
COE is now an epicenter of research activity. The bar for scholarly productivity was not nearly so high in 1978. I graduated from my doctoral program with three scholarly publications under my belt (well, to be honest, one was still “in press”). I was such an anomaly with that record that within a few years of arriving at UGA I was drafted as a mentor (first time I’d heard that moniker) for a federally funded project that assisted women and minority faculty members in writing up manuscripts for publication. In 1983 when I received my first grant from the Fund for Improvement of Postsecondary Education, the research infrastructure was so minimal that there was no one around who could caution me about what “cost sharing” implied to the Feds.
As remarkable as has been the transformation of this university and this college in that generation and a half, my institutional memory compels me to highlight one specific benchmark against which UGA has slipped rather than progressed since my early years here, one particular endeavor for which COE has not quite mustered the political will it evinced in the early 80s.
It is a strategic blunder and a moral disgrace that an institution with global aspirations has in recent years allowed its major resource for outreach and support of international students and scholars to disintegrate.
In 1979, Ted Kalivoda—a faculty member in the department of Language Education(1) --recognized a need to provide English language instruction and cultural adaptation support for international students. The American Language Program was at its inception affiliated with COE. Classes were taught in Aderhold. Shortly thereafter the American Language Program migrated to the Georgia Center for Continuing Education, because the administrative structure at the Georgia Center was more in synch with the Program’s non-state budget. At its zenith, the American Language Program introduced about 300 international students per year to the UGA community. Throughout its lifetime, the Program remained well integrated with COE. Many of its instructors were COE graduates, COE faculty and doctoral students conducted research at the Program, and COE students were regularly engaged in internships, practica, and experiential learning at the American Language Program.
The American Language Program, conceived and nurtured within COE, suffered a painful and lingering demise. Fingers may point in many different directions in assigning the blame for this disaster, but by 2000 UGA could no longer boast any coherent intensive English/American culture institute for internationals. (Just a few years ago COE did offer a proposal to reestablish such a program for internationals, but it was not acceptable to the UGA administration.) As a consequence, the overall international presence on campus has declined, which in turn diminishes the opportunities for multicultural enrichment for all of our students. While scattered units on campus certainly still struggle to provide some support for internationals—Academic Assistance for one, and the International Teaching Assistant program still supported by COE for another—many non-native speakers of English at UGA find precious little assistance to help them negotiate the demands of the academy. Many internationals find the academic climate at UGA chilly indeed.
Can a university that fails to provide basic language and cultural support for international students stake any credible claim to the status of a global institution? Can UGA seriously espouse a multicultural curriculum when our U.S. born English-dominant student body is deprived of the cultural enrichment that would be afforded on their own campus by an American language and culture program for internationals?
A generation and a half ago, COE led the way in establishing such a learning resource for international students on the UGA campus. As COE stands on the threshold of its second century, would it not be fitting for COE to once again raise the standard of multiculturalism and internationalism?(1)Footnote: Ted was at that time jointly appointed in the Department of Romance Languages as well as in COE. Joint appointments between colleges of education and “subject matter” departments were common at that time, but I believe I may have been the last of the hybrid faculty. The joint-appointment arrangement was advantageous in a number of respects. More recent initiatives at UGA such as STEP have sought to remedy the disjuncture that often arises when insufficient contact accrues between colleges of education and colleges of liberal arts and sciences. )
Retired Faculty Stories Don Rubin |
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