Hispania

Introduction

The Department of World Languages and Cultures (WLAC), housed in the School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI, has been through a series of transitions over the last twenty years due to university structural changes, but mostly because of curricular needs. Originally there were three separate departments, French, Spanish and German, as each of these core languages offered a BA degree, and the other languages offered were distributed equally among those three academic units for administrative and course scheduling purposes. The three languages had healthy numbers of majors, but many students were registered in the School of Education in the teacher certification program and only met the language requirements to complete their degrees. Eventually, due to decreasing enrollments in French and German, and the need to cut back on funding three department chairs, all languages merged in 1997, forming the Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures which then changed to the Department of World Languages and Cultures (WLAC) in 2000, with one chair and coordinators for the individual degree-offering languages.

Prior to the merger, German and Japanese were already offering LPSP in Business German, Advanced Business German, and Business Japanese, and Spanish was offering SPSP classes in Spanish for Health Care Personnel and Business Spanish. With the development of a senior-level translation class by one professor who had experience in SPSP and translation and interpreting (T&I), WLAC experienced a progressive CDA leap into the SPSP curriculum in 2000 with the development of additional courses in translation studies in French and German, as the department already had qualified and trained professors who opted to offer LPSP classes in addition to the literature- and linguistic-based curriculum. Some faculty were concerned about how the addition of these classes would impact enrollments in the traditional classes, but the overarching goal of WLAC has always been to meet the needs of language learners who want to apply their proficiency and specialized knowledge to other disciplines. Enrollments in all the LPSP courses gradually increased and more students outside the major began filling these classes.

Based on the success of high enrollments in all LPSP classes, WLAC voted unanimously in 2000 to move forward with the development of an Undergraduate Certificate in Translation Studies in French, German, and Spanish (goo.gl/V2tfXa). All courses are open to all students, and admission into the Certificate is not a requirement to take the courses. However, admission into the Certificate itself has high standards, requiring students to have completed a first-year composition class in English as well as a third-year language composition class, both with a grade of B or better, and an overall GPA of 3.3 or higher on a scale of 4.0. Once admitted to the Certificate, students must follow pre-requisites for registering for translation courses. The first two translation courses require completion of two language-neutral courses in translation theory and technology in translation, also open to any students in any of the languages offered. Students [End Page 497] then complete three more translation courses in sequence. The Certificate also requires students to complete one course in culture, one in linguistics, one LPSP class, one in English editing and proofreading, and a capstone internship. Furthermore, of the nine courses in the Certificate, four include a Service Learning component. Responsive CDA also increased LPSP offerings to include Spanish for Law Enforcement, Legal Spanish, Medical Interpreting, Medical French, and Medical German. The overlap in courses outside T&I classes did not diminish but rather improved enrollments in the more traditional courses in culture and linguistics. These latter courses were required for language majors, but with an initial enrollment of 28 students in the Certificate in Translation Studies courses, approximately 25% of these students were non-majors who enrolled in linguistics and culture courses as per the requirements.

With overall enrollments increasing and the need for sustainability, the department focused on increasing the number of faculty, and four new tenure-track positions brought in professors whose primary area of teaching and research is in T&I...