Portuguese Joins Summer Program as 9th School

Author: Paul Barnwell

Middlebury College recently announced the addition a Portuguese summer language school, slated to open in June, 2003. The decision, approved by the Board of Trustees in December 2001, also includes a plan to offer classes in introductory Portuguese during the 2002-2003 academic school year with hopes of study abroad opportunities for Middlebury students in Brazil or Portugal beginning in 2003.

The Portuguese School, with an enrollment goal of 30 students, will become the first new summer program since the introduction of the Arabic School in 1982. The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth is currently the only U.S. institution to offer a comprehensive summer program in Portuguese.

Middlebury began researching the potential for a new program a few years ago, said Robert Keren, marketing and communications director of the Language Schools and Schools Abroad.

"It started back in 1998-1999. The language schools, under the directorship of Dean of the Language Schools and Schools Abroad Michael Katz, launched a strategic planning process in which we took a look at the long history of the language schools," Keren commented. "We realized the need for language study in the United States changes and grows over time."

The study narrowed the choice down to four languages: Hebrew, Hindi, Korean and Portuguese. According to data from the Modern Language Association, 200 million people speak Portuguese worldwide and 150 programs exist at U.S. institutions of higher learning. Selecting Portuguese over the other languages was an easy decision, according to Katz.

"Portuguese just seemed to be the up and coming language," he explained. "We also think there are enough students interested in Latin America who already know Spanish who would want to come here and learn Portuguese, aside from the fact that it is a beautiful language with wonderful culture and literature."

Katz noted key reasons for omitting the other languages. Hindi has a large number of speakers, he said, but English is still the official language of India. Korean is growing in popularity, but the surge is mainly on the West Coast. Hebrew is still divided between biblical Hebrew and the Modern Hebrew spoken in Israel so "we didn't know how to straddle that," Katz said.

While support is widespread for the summer program, some faculty members are not sold on the creation of the Portuguese mini-department for the academic school year. The Portuguese offering will not be consistent with the broad academic scope of the other language programs because only one year of instruction will be available.

Nevertheless, two semesters of Portuguese will still enable Middlebury students interested in study abroad in Brazil or Portugal to become eligible by following up the academic year with a stint at the new summer school.

"It's a new way of doing language. I would say it doesn't have unanimous support," Katz said. "It has a number of people who support it and a number of people who are worried."

Dean of the Faculty Robert Schine expressed the general attitude of those who disagree with the instrumental approach of the new department. "If you're going to do it, do it right," he said. "Let's have Portuguese on all levels, including Portuguese literature. Here we have started a program that doesn't have the same goals as the other language programs."

Katz pointed out that Portuguese would not be the sole non-comprehensive language program offered at the College. "Hebrew is currently being taught in the Classics Department with only one year of organized classes," he said.

"It may turn out that this develops into something bigger. It may turn out that this is just right and serves students well, but that's something we'll see in two or three years," Schine said.