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4
Infusing a Foreign Language
and Area Studies Dimension
and Conducting Outreach
and Dissemination
T
he previous chapters have outlined new needs for foreign language
and area expertise among federal personnel, professionals, teachers,
and the public—needs created by dramatic changes in the world
since the creation of Title VI in 1958. This chapter is the first of several
reviewing the performance of the Title VI and Fulbright-Hays (Title VI/FH)
in helping to address these needs based on the eight areas specified by Con-
gress. The chapter considers two of these areas in a single chapter given
the integral relationship between them: (1) infusing a foreign language and
area studies dimension throughout the education system and across relevant
disciplines, including professional education, and (2) conducting public
outreach/dissemination to K-12 and higher education, media, government,
business, and the public.1
The Title VI/FH programs are aimed primarily at infusion of foreign
language, area, and international studies (“internationalization”) horizon-
tally in higher education—across university type, across disciplines, and
across the country, and the chapter begins with a review of this activity. The
programs have also been charged with helping to internationalize vertically
into the K-12 system. Outreach by National Resource Centers (NRC) and
Language Resource Centers (LRC) is a major component of internation-
alization in K-12 and is discussed in this context. The chapter also briefly
outlines broader internationalization efforts, in the form of outreach to the
1 Outreach to business is mentioned briefly in this chapter and discussed in more detail in
Chapter 10.
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0 INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES
media, government, business, and the public as well as outreach activities
by the U.S. Department of Education (ED).
INTERNATIONALIZING HIGHER EDUCATION
One measure of progress toward internationalizing higher education is
the degree to which the Title VI/FH programs reach various components
of higher education (e.g., community colleges, undergraduate institutions,
professional schools). Different Title VI/FH programs reach these different
components. Both historically and today, NRC program grants have been
awarded primarily to the nation’s leading research universities in order
to provide advanced training and research in foreign languages and area
studies. The Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language
(UISFL) Program, as its name implies, reaches smaller undergraduate col-
leges and universities to a much greater extent, although not exclusively. In
addition, the Business and International Education (BIE) Program reaches
smaller colleges and universities (see Chapter 10). Table 4-1 demonstrates,
based on the Carnegie classifications (the Carnegie Commission on Higher
Education uses empirical university data to classify colleges and universities
by type), the distribution of Title VI/FH grants by type of institution.
While institutions classified as predominantly research or that award
doctoral or masters degrees receive the bulk of grants across programs,
a significant proportion of UISFL and BIE grants—grants viewed as seed
money to begin internationalizing the undergraduate curriculum—have
been provided to baccalaureate and associate degree-granting institutions.
The Faculty Research Abroad (FRA) Program also provides a substantial
portion of grants to baccalaureate-awarding institutions.
TABLE 4-1 Percentage of FY 2004 Grants by Type of Institution, Based
on Carnegie Classification
Percentage
Program Research Doctoral Masters Baccalaureate Associates Other
NRC 88.0 1.8 5.0 5.0
FLAS 98.0 2.0
LRC 100.0
UISFL 43.0 5.0 26.0 13.2 11.8
CIBER 96.7 3.3
BIE 26.4 8.3 44.4 6 .0 15.0
DDRA 94.7 3.0 2.6
FRA 69.0 7.7 4.0 19.2
GPA 73.0 3.8 11.5 3.8 4.0
SOURCE: Data provided by U.S. Department of Education [EELIAS].
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REVIEWING THE PERFORMANCE OF TITLE VI/FH
The Title VI/FH programs also reach broadly to higher education insti-
tutions across the United States.2 The programs support higher education
institutions in all nine census regions, although both the East North Central
and Pacific regions receive a greater share of total funding than all other
regions. In addition, all states but Nevada and Wyoming received at least
one grant at some point over the past 10 years. It is unclear if applications
were received from those states.
It is of course important to look at not only who receives grants but
also the effect that they have on the institutions that receive them. Several
evaluations have assessed the internalization effect of specific Title VI
programs. At the undergraduate level, Schneider and Burn (1999) found
that UISFL grants had a positive impact on internationalization. Institu-
tions that received a UISFL grant reported that the program had a positive
effect on many elements deemed critical to developing and strengthen-
ing international education, such as requiring an international course for
graduation and having a formally designated adviser for students doing
international or area studies. UISFL grantees reported adding new courses
and languages, and nearly all of these courses were still being offered with
solid enrollments after the grant ended. Most institutions continued to
support the UISFL-funded program for five or more years after the grant
ended. Directors of UISFL projects had a high degree of satisfaction with
their projects’ impacts.
There is evidence that funding from BIE and Centers for International
Business Education and Research (CIBER) for business school programs
has had a similar effect, adding an international component to the business
curriculum. In comparison with non-CIBER schools, business schools with
CIBER status were likely to have more international business courses in
their core program, to integrate language instruction into the curriculum,
and to offer a greater variety of languages, especially less commonly taught
languages (Folks, 2002). CIBERs offered language training in several lan-
guages of high priority to economic competitiveness (Brecht and Rivers,
2000). BIE grant recipients reported enhancement of faculty expertise in in-
ternational business as a result of the grant, and 30 percent of the programs
continued to fund research on international business topics after the end
of the grant period. Courses and curricular programs developed with BIE
funds also continued after the initial BIE grant ended3 (Gerber, 2002).
A report from the national Title VI conference held at the University of
California, Los Angeles, in 1997 indicated that NRCs, LRCs, and CIBERs
2 The committee notes that the statute includes a provision that, as practicable and consis-
tent with the selection criteria, grants should be awarded “in such a manner as to achieve an
equitable distribution of funds throughout the United States.”
3 Many of the universities surveyed in this study received subsequent BIE and CIBER grants
that may have helped support continuation of the new international courses and programs.
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INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES
were engaged in a variety of efforts to internationalize higher education.
The centers were collaborating with departments and schools across the
university to develop curricula, host visiting international scholars, sponsor
international film festivals, and support programs that bring international
students to smaller colleges with few international students (Metzler, 1997).
Committee site visits in fall 2006 indicated that, at least at the site visit
universities, efforts to internationalize higher education are continuing. At
all eight site visit universities, faculty and administrators affiliated with Title
VI centers had created or were in the process of creating new undergradu-
ate majors and minors with a global, international, or area studies focus.
Several were in the process of increasing the number and level of language
or international courses required of all students for graduation. New York
University was engaged in efforts to tap the strengths of NRC-funded area
studies centers and its network of study abroad sites to develop new, more
rigorous area studies undergraduate majors. In addition to these more gen-
eral curriculum development efforts, some site visit universities were using
Title VI funds to create and disseminate specific courses and instructional
materials for use beyond the home university. One example is San Diego
State University’s Digital Media Archive (see Box 4-1).
Experts from the Title VI community who addressed the committee
stressed their efforts to internationalize the campus. They argued that Title
VI programs help infuse international components into a wide variety of
university programs and disciplines. Gabara (2006) provided an example
of a university that used USIFL funds for a multidisciplinary Language
Across the Curriculum program, which infused linguistic fluency into vari-
ous disciplinary courses across the undergraduate curriculum. In addition,
the committee was told (Merkx, 2006) that many universities now expect
graduate students in a broad array of fields to gain proficiency in a foreign
language and that the language and area studies courses offered through
NRCs lead to a variety of undergraduate and graduate degree options
with an international focus. Many NRCs also provide degree options for
students in professional programs, such as business, law, medicine, and
engineering. In addition, some professional programs now provide the op-
portunity to integrate an area studies focus into other fields, such as public
policy, law, public health, journalism, business, and information and library
science (Newhall, 2006). Birch (2006) reported that CIBERs also encourage
cooperation between business schools and other academic departments;
they leverage the expertise of faculty in language and international studies
to help prepare business graduates who may then go on to work for com-
panies competing globally.
This collaborative approach of reaching across disciplines in research
and teaching is often difficult in academia, which tends to be compartmen-
talized by discipline (National Research Council, 2004; Merkx, 2005).
According to a National Research Council report (2004), “Despite the
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BOX 4-1
Developing and Disseminating Curriculum
at San Diego State University
The San Diego State University LRC, in collaboration with the university’s
Latin America NRC, is developing and disseminating online curriculum materials
that can be freely used by higher education faculty and students anywhere in the
nation or the world. The LRC has created a Digital Media Archive with authentic
(materials created for use by native speakers) Spanish language materials for use
by teachers, students, and curriculum designers involved in advanced Spanish
and Latin American culture classes.
In September 2006, the archive was populated with two large sets of ma-
terials. The first encompassed literature from Baja California linked to Spanish
instructional support materials, such as vocabulary lists and grammar examples.
These materials are designed to supplement college and university courses on
the Spanish language, border culture, economics, history, and sociology, whether
those courses are taught in classrooms or online. Preliminary tests of these ma-
terials with San Diego State University students indicate that they are effective in
enhancing learning (San Diego State University, 2006a). The second set of mate-
rials focuses on understanding human rights issues in Latin America by examining
authentic Spanish language multinational communications and discourse. Its goal
is to combine regional political studies of Latin America and development of ad-
vanced Spanish reading and writing skills (San Diego State University, 2006b).
The archive also houses materials for both commonly taught and less com-
monly taught languages, including Arabic, Persian, Iraqi dialect, Filipino, Korean,
French, Italian, Portuguese, Mixtec, German, and others. These materials are
either teacher-created or authentic and may contain lesson plans and suggestions
for classroom use.
NOTE: Information contained in this box came from a committee site visit (2006) and uni-
versity project websites (San Diego State University, 2006a, 2006b).
apparent benefits of [interdisciplinary research], researchers interested in
pursuing it often face daunting obstacles and disincentives.” In some cases,
this is “related to the tradition in academic institutions of organizing re-
search and teaching activities by discipline based departments” (p. 1). NRC
grants support campus centers that are by definition interdisciplinary, and
they may be the most successful, long-term, and far-reaching effort that
brings social science and humanities together. This achievement is a side
benefit of NRCs and area studies generally. Gilbert Merkx (2006), an NRC
director and co-chair of the Council of National Resource Center Directors,
emphasized to the committee:
It is important to understand that the NRCs are interdisciplinary in nature,
but not non-disciplinary. In other words, the area studies faculty affiliated
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INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES
with an NRC have their primary appointments in a disciplinary depart-
ment such as history or political science. The courses taught are disciplin-
ary courses that may be cross-listed with the area center. Without the
presence of the center, these faculty members from different departments
would have little contact. The center brings the faculty together to form
an intellectual community.
The NRCs and the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellow-
ship Program also appear to be reaching students from a range of disci-
plines. University reports on the primary discipline of their NRC master’s
“graduates” (those who had taken 15 or more area studies or foreign
language credit hours) indicate that the NRCs are reaching a diverse set of
students (see Table 4-2). While the greatest number of students is studying
foreign languages or literature, area studies, or international studies, the
universities report that they are reaching students from numerous other
disciplines.
The reported discipline of FLAS fellows is similarly diverse, although
to a somewhat lesser extent than NRC master’s graduates (see Table 4-3).
The diversity of disciplines among FLAS recipients reflects the reality that
these fellowships are designed primarily to support disciplinary research.
FLAS Fellowships for intensive language study, either in the United States
or abroad, are designed to provide enough language proficiency to carry
TABLE 4-2 NRC Master’s “Graduates” by Discipline, 2002-2004
Discipline Graduates Percentage
Foreign languages and literature 1,159 9.07
Area studies 1,077 8.43
Global/international relations and studies 884 6.92
International/area studies 830 6.50
Education 792 6.20
Health sciences 774 6.06
Business administration and management 671 5.25
History 559 4.38
Political science 461 3.61
Law 344 2.69
Anthropology 341 2.67
English 286 2.24
Economics 253 1.98
Public policy 252 1.97
International business 235 1.84
Art/art history 229 1.79
155 other disciplines 3,626 28.39
SOURCE: Data provided by U.S. Department of Education [EELIAS].
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REVIEWING THE PERFORMANCE OF TITLE VI/FH
TABLE 4-3 Disciplines of FLAS Fellows,
2001-2005
Discipline Number Percentage
Area studies 2,638 16
History 2,126 13
Anthropology 1,964 12
Foreign languages and literature 1,950 12
Political science 1,047 6
International/area studies 688 4
Law 466 3
Linguistics 454 3
Religious studies 437 3
43 other disciplines 0 0
SOURCE: Data provided by U.S. Department of Education
[EELIAS].
out masters’ or doctoral research. The fellowship program is not focused
on advanced language study for its own sake.
Committee site visits provided some support for the contention that
NRCs provide opportunities for interdisciplinary work that would prob-
ably not occur otherwise. Staff reported that Title VI helps fund such ac-
tivities as seminars that bring students and faculty together from multiple
disciplines who might not otherwise interact, grant funds for faculty from a
diverse range of disciplines to conduct research on international topics, and
leverage the incorporation of international material into the curriculum of
a range of courses. Some faculty reported that they would be unlikely to be
involved in international work without the involvement of the NRC, given
that the disciplinary emphasis of their home departments is elsewhere and
does not intrinsically encourage their international interest. The committee
also heard from students who had received FLAS awards in which a foreign
language was integral to their degree in music, political science, or business.
One NRC that offers an area studies master’s degree uses half of its FLAS
awards for its own master’s students and reserves the other half for students
from other disciplines. Box 4-2 illustrates the centralized approach used at
Ohio State University, a university with multiple NRCs, to infuse a foreign
language and area studies dimension throughout the university. Although
this model will not be appropriate for all universities, it is an example of
an approach that was reported to positively impact internationalization of
the campus.
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INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES
BOX 4-2
Infusion of Foreign Languages and Area Studies
at Ohio State University
Ohio State University’s administrative structure facilitates infusion of foreign
language and area studies across the disciplines and divisions of the campus. All
of the Title VI-funded area studies centers report directly to the Associate Provost
of International Affairs. They are all housed together in the International Affairs
building, along with the Office of International Education (which operates study
abroad and international student programs), which encourages the centers to
work with each other. The center directors meet monthly.
Administrators and NRC directors described a highly interdisciplinary approach
to foreign language and area studies. Title VI supports this approach by providing
seed money that is often used to pay a percentage of the salary of a new hire with
a regional focus, in such disciplines as history, anthropology, or political science.
Title IV provides funds to develop and initially teach new courses that a depart-
ment will take on subsequently as its own. The university’s coordinated structure
for international education also facilitates collaboration between the area studies
centers and the professional schools. Although each center has its own outreach
coordinator, there is also a coordinator in the Office of International Affairs who
facilitates the work of them all. This centralized structure streamlines the NRCs’
collaboration with the School of Education, which in turn helps to internationalize
the school’s curriculum and prepare future teachers to become knowledgeable
about world areas and languages. The Slavic NRC helped the School of Agri-
culture establish a research and study site at Tomsk State University in Siberia.
Similarly, the Center for African Studies (CAS) was instrumental in engaging the
School of Public Health (SPH) in activities in Africa. Specifically, CAS has worked
with SPH to offer global health courses with a focus on Africa. SPH is not (yet)
engaged in any tangible projects in Africa.
NOTE: Information contained in this box came from a committee site visit (2006).
INTERNATIONALIZING K-12 EDUCATION
Educational Needs and Teaching Gaps
Early language learning in elementary and secondary school is key to
establishing a pipeline of students who can eventually reach a high enough
level of proficiency in foreign language and culture to meet national needs.
Young children are good language learners and, if permitted to follow
well-articulated sequences, can acquire a very solid base for more complex
linguistic knowledge or starting another language in high school or college.
Investing early in the foreign language skills of students would therefore
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REVIEWING THE PERFORMANCE OF TITLE VI/FH
allow a greater number of them to acquire these competencies and also al-
low those who would pursue advanced study at the college and graduate
level deeper levels of proficiency. Exposure to international content in the
K-12 curriculum is also needed to help students understand different world
regions (geography, culture, and history) and to inspire students to further
this knowledge.
Current efforts to develop language skills and knowledge of world re-
gions at an early age are clearly inadequate to prepare high school graduates
with the skills necessary for productivity and citizenship in an integrated
global economy (Committee for Economic Development, 2006). Accord-
ing to an American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages study
of public school enrollments in foreign languages, only 34 percent of U.S.
K-12 students were enrolled in foreign language classes in 2000 (Draper
and Hicks, 2002). Almost 70 percent of these students were studying Span-
ish, and another 18 percent were studying French. Next were German (4.8
percent) and Latin (2.7 percent). Very small percentages of students were
studying more difficult languages, such as Russian (0.2 percent) and Japa-
nese (0.8 percent). The percentage of students studying Arabic and Chinese
was minuscule; only four states even reported teaching Arabic, with 426
students enrolled in grades 7 through 12. Chinese fared a little better, with
about 5,000 students taking courses in eight states in grades 7 through 12.
In addition, the report states that the length of time students spent studying
languages at school had stagnated, so many students reached only introduc-
tory levels of proficiency.
Students’ knowledge of international issues, aside from language, is
also inadequate. The National Commission on Asia in the Schools found
that 25 percent of college-bound high school students did not know the
name of the Pacific Ocean and that 80 percent of adults and students could
not identify India, the world’s largest democracy with a rapidly growing
economy, on a world map (National Commission on Asia in the Schools,
2005). A 2006 National Geographic/Roper Survey of young Americans
ages 18 to 24 found that only 37 percent could locate Iraq on a map and
20 percent thought Sudan was located in Asia (Roper Public Affairs and
Media, 2006). These and many other examples illustrate that knowledge
of languages and world regions is essential in a wide variety of disciplines,
including geography, social studies, history, and perhaps even science and
literature.
One of the key deterrents to developing a pipeline of young people
prepared to develop advanced language proficiency and deep knowledge of
countries and cultures is a lack of trained teachers. The U.S. K-12 system
needs foreign language teachers as well as teachers trained on topics in the
geography, cultures, and history of various world regions and, therefore,
the college programs that will produce them. A survey of secondary school
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INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES
principals and foreign language teachers by the Center for Applied Linguis-
tics (1999) identified a shortage of foreign language teachers as a major
impediment to greater foreign language learning, along with funding, lack
of training, and poor academic counseling. The top issues for elementary
schools were overall lack of funding for language instruction, lack of in-
service training, and inadequate sequencing from elementary to secondary
schools. Large student-teacher ratios were identified as major barriers to ef-
fective language instruction at both the elementary and secondary levels.
The shortage of foreign language teachers was also addressed in a
report by the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University
of Washington (Murphy and DeArmond, 2003). The researchers drew on
data from the Schools and Staffing Survey of the ED’s National Center
for Education Statistics. One of their findings was that job openings for
foreign language teachers were most difficult to fill—more so than open-
ings for other hard-to-fill teaching positions in special education, English
as a second language, and science. At the same time, administrators were
less likely to use cash incentives to lure foreign language teachers to their
districts than when trying to attract teachers of other subjects.
Role of Title VI/FH Programs in K-12 Education
Clearly, there are many gaps in students’ and teachers’ knowledge of
world regions and languages. Although never intended to fill these large
educational gaps, the Title VI/FH programs do assist K-12 education, both
directly and indirectly. Two Fulbright-Hays programs provide professional
development and travel opportunities for current and future teachers, and
the NRC and LRC programs have supported teachers and students in in-
ternational and language education.
Group Projects Abroad
The Group Projects Abroad (GPA) Program supports groups of stu-
dents, faculty, and teachers (including K-12 teachers) in overseas travel
for training, research, and curriculum development in modern foreign lan-
guages and area studies. Each year, ED invites K-12 teachers and admin-
istrators to apply for two different types of activities: (1) short-term (5- to
6-week) seminars focusing on an aspect of area studies and designed to help
internationalize a school’s or higher education institution’s curriculum and
(2) a curriculum development team. A team composed of several faculty
members or teachers or administrators spends four to six weeks abroad,
acquiring resource materials for curriculum development in the modern
foreign language spoken or the area in which they travel. Participants are
required to plan for systematic use and dissemination of these materials.
In addition to these activities, every three years ED holds a competi-
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tion for another GPA activity—the Advanced Overseas Intensive Language
Projects. Not only graduate students but also future teachers—juniors or
seniors planning to teach modern foreign languages or area studies—are
eligible for advanced language training abroad, lasting at least one summer
and up to three years (U.S. Department of Education, 2007b).
Seminars Abroad
The Seminars Abroad Program sends groups of 14 to 16 social science
and humanities teachers to countries outside Western Europe for an intro-
duction to the culture. ED funds 7 to 10 seminars each year, involving no
more than 160 teachers (U.S. Department of Education, 2007c).
Outreach Priorities
In recent years, ED has used grant competitions both to encourage
NRC outreach activities and to target those activities toward K-12 educa-
tion. The number of potential points for outreach increased from 15 in FY
2003 to 20 in FY 2006. Similarly, as explained earlier, in the four most
recent NRC grant competitions, dating to 1996, ED announced an absolute
priority for projects that include teacher training activities on the language,
languages, area studies, or the thematic focus of the center (see Appendix
C). In addition, the two most recent NRC competitions have included invi-
tational priorities encouraging applicants to develop linkages with schools
of education to improve teacher training. Finally, the most recent (FY 2006)
competition included an invitational priority for “activities that expand and
enhance outreach to K-12 constituencies,” further reinforcing the depart-
ment’s interest in outreach to elementary and secondary education.
Perhaps because the legislative mandate of the LRC program clearly
emphasizes wide dissemination of language instructional materials, the
application process has not specifically emphasized outreach. By statute,
LRC grants are provided in order to improve language teaching at all levels
of education, including the K-12 level. In its most recent (FY 2006) LRC
request for applications (U.S. Department of Education, 2005e), ED an-
nounced an invitational priority calling for research into new and improved
methods of teaching foreign languages and dissemination of the research
results.
Examples of NRC and LRC Outreach to K-12
NRC and LRC grantees have carried out an array of projects designed
to share expertise in world regions and languages with teachers, schools,
and students.
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BOX 4-3
Outreach World
Outreach World is an Internet portal that serves as a shared website for 120
federally funded NRCs based at 146 universities, along with 42 LRCs and CIBERs
based at 44 universities. Launched in September 2003, the portal organizes,
catalogues, and disseminates a range of instructional materials produced by
teachers and scholars affiliated with these three programs and with the Fulbright-
Hays GPA Program. Outreach World also provides information to teachers about
opportunities for professional development and overseas study and information
on award-winning books about Africa, Asia, and other world regions. Users can
search for materials by world region, country, school subject, resource type, time
period, instructional strategy, or grade level.
In late 2006, the home page of the website (http://www.outreachworld.org)
presented three major groups of information: (1) three searchable databases
including the instructional materials described above, contact information on all
NRC-funded area studies centers, and a national calendar of professional de-
velopment events; (2) images and articles about the winners of the 2006 African
Studies Association Africana book awards, the Americas award titles for 2005, and
the Middle East Outreach Council book award; and (3) links to overseas travel
reports and overseas travel opportunities (the GPA Program) along with a listing of
top resources for classroom use. According to the developer, more than 100,000
items were downloaded by teachers and educators in 2006.
NOTE: Information contained in this box came from a committee site visit (2006) and uni-
versity project websites (University of California, Los Angeles, 2006c).
Evaluating K- Outreach Activities
Title VI centers do not typically have adequate financial resources to
evaluate the long-term outcomes of their outreach activities, including
activities targeted to K-12 education. However, in one example, the Uni-
versity of Iowa National K-12 LRC conducted a study of a teacher training
institute (see Box 4-4). More recently, an IRS grant has enabled the Uni-
versity of North Carolina School of Education, in collaboration with the
university’s Center for International Studies and NRC outreach programs at
other universities, to create a K-12 international outreach program evalua-
tion “toolkit” (University of North Carolina, 2006). The web-based system
is designed to help NRC staff, teachers, administrators, and others assess
the extent to which K-12 outreach programs meet goals and expectations.
These and other evaluation studies may provide improved information in
the future about the effectiveness of NRC outreach activities.
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Preparing Teachers for International Education
Clearly, the nation needs more teachers with advanced knowledge of
world languages and regions. Addressing this problem will require major
changes at the colleges of education that prepare future teachers. A re-
cent study funded by ED (Schneider, 2003) found that teacher education
programs typically include little international or foreign language train-
ing. However, the Title VI/FH activities for teachers outlined above focus
primarily on professional development of the current teaching workforce,
rather than on teacher education. The recent study found further evidence
BOX 4-4
An Evaluation of a Foreign Language Institute
The University of Iowa National K-12 LRC designed a 10-day summer institute
to strengthen the skills and knowledge of teacher educators at schools of educa-
tion with responsibility for preparing K-6 foreign language teachers for licensure.
Based on a needs assessment, they invited two groups to participate in the
institute: (1) teacher educators with responsibility for preparing future elementary
school foreign language teachers and (2) experienced, knowledgeable K-6 for-
eign language teachers. Staff at the LRC conducted a study of both short-term
and longer term outcomes of the institute. A preinstitute survey indicated that the
teacher educators had significantly less understanding than the practicing teach-
ers of topics addressed in the institute, such as program planning, integrating
foreign language with the elementary school curriculum, and teaching strategies
for young children. A postinstitute survey showed that this gap had disappeared
and the teacher educators had gained significant increases in their understanding
of most topics.
To assess longer term outcomes, the investigators contacted 27 teacher
educators two years after their participation in the institute. They found that 23 of
the 26 teacher educators had added or were in the process of adding elemen-
tary language teaching methods courses to the curriculum, and most of the new
methods courses incorporated topics addressed at the institute. In addition, about
half of the teacher educators reported other activities to strengthen preparation
of future K-6 foreign language teachers, such as developing a Spanish minor for
elementary education majors, planning for a formal K-6 language teacher prepara-
tion program, and launching a foreign language practicum and student teaching
at the elementary school level. Finally, 19 of the teacher educators said they had
developed or taught new courses, workshops, or in-service teacher training ses-
sions related to K-6 foreign language instruction. The authors conclude that the
institute was a catalyst for organizational change at most of the colleges and uni-
versities represented by the teacher educators who participated in the institute.
NOTE: Information in this box came from Rosenbusch, Kemis, and Moran (2000).
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of this limited approach. Schneider (2003) examined NRC websites and
found that NRCs offered workshops and seminars for current teachers, but
few programs for prospective teachers. It appears that Title VI/FH K-12
outreach programs have reached relatively few teachers to date.
It is important to keep in mind that the Title VI/FH programs are not
targeted to schools of education to boost the international component of
the teacher education curriculum, but rather to area study centers. Nor
do the programs provide funding directly to schools or school districts to
support language and social studies teaching. Instead, the programs cur-
rently support K-12 language and area instruction indirectly, focusing on
capacity-building (production of curricula, research on improving teaching
strategies, etc.) and providing supplemental learning and travel opportuni-
ties to a small group of current and future teachers. In 2003, the NRC
outreach coordinators put it this way (Friedlander, Marshall, and Metzler,
2003): “We are 114 NRCs and 14 LRCs attempting to serve approximately
3.8 million teachers nationwide in diverse geographical locales and set-
tings—from the inner city to the rural schools.”
Meeting the diverse international education and foreign language
needs of teachers and schools across the nation will require a strategic
approach that coordinates and expands Title VI/FH programs with other
federal programs and financial resources, as the committee recommends in
Chapter 12.
CONDUCTING OUTREACH
Outreach Challenges
Outreach is not a natural fit for most universities, and Title VI funding
seems to have served as a catalyst for them to conduct outreach. Universi-
ties have developed collaboration and other mechanisms to support their
efforts. Outreach activities do not fit naturally in the academic structure of
the research university. In a 1997 report on outreach, one NRC outreach
coordinator asserted that academia views its primary tasks as research,
training the next generation of scholars, and dissemination of knowledge
through the traditional means of undergraduate and graduate instruction
(Wiley, 1997). The author warned that, because the academic reward struc-
ture tends to devalue outreach, few NRC directors “perceive great value
in doing outreach” (Wiley, 1997, p. 119). At that time, most NRCs lacked
full-time outreach staff, assigning these responsibilities either to an assis-
tant or associate director with many other responsibilities or to a part-time
graduate student. At sites visited by the committee in 2006, some NRCs
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continued to assign outreach activities to associate directors, while other
centers had at least one full-time outreach coordinator.
A 2003 report by three NRC outreach coordinators highlighted the
same disconnect between the academic area studies center and outreach
activities (Friedlander, Marshall, and Metzler, 2003). The authors argued
that, although most university mission statements mention service (i.e., out-
reach), in reality, universities do not view outreach as central to their core
missions of knowledge generation and dissemination. Echoing the earlier
outreach report, the authors noted that outreach activities are not rewarded
by tenure and promotions, and they may even be viewed negatively, as bar-
riers to scholarly research and publication.
Federal Funding as a Catalyst for Outreach Activities
Because the academic environment does not tend to support outreach
activities, outreach may be more influenced by federal funding than other
Title VI activities. In site visits, faculty and staff associated with NRC-
funded centers reported that outreach activities declined in the absence of
federal funding. For example, the associate director of an NRC that lost
funding between 2003 and 2005 reported that the center’s collaboration
with the university’s school of education in K-12 outreach had stopped dur-
ing that period. Representatives of many other NRCs indicated that, if their
center received reduced funding in the future, outreach would be one of
the first activities to be dropped or reduced (the other most common victim
was the teaching of less commonly taught languages). NRC representatives
also provided detailed financial information showing that outreach activi-
ties receive the majority of their total funding from Title VI, in contrast to
area studies and language training, which rely primarily on university funds
supplemented by Title VI funding.
Outreach Activities
As evidenced by the information available to the committee, NRC out-
reach activities tend to focus on the culture, politics, and geography of a
world region, whereas LRC outreach focuses on languages. The Council of
Directors of National Foreign Language Resource Centers reported that the
LRCs conducted 299 training activities between May 1998 and September
1999 and were attended by slightly more participants from K-12 (5,550)
than higher education (4,232). During that same time period, they reported
three types of outreach activities: conferences sponsored (24), newsletters
published (28), and websites (18 sites with 973,540 hits) (http://nflrc.msu.
edu/performance_indicators.html, accessed February 11, 2006).
The NRCs are required to report outreach activities via the Evaluation
of Exchange, Language, International and Area Studies (EELIAS) database,
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but these reports are not easily aggregated since the “type of activity” (e.g.,
outreach) is a narrative field. The NRCs reported 30,155 outreach activities
from the beginning of 2001 to mid-2006. Attendance at these quite differ-
ent types of activities was reported as ranging from zero (reported for 459
activities) to 999,999 (which includes estimated viewing/readership num-
bers for television appearances and editorial columns by faculty and website
hits among the 15 activities reported). The audiences identified in these
reports suggest that NRCs are targeting outreach to a range of audiences.
Collaborative Approaches
One way in which NRC faculty and staff have addressed the challenge
of providing outreach in an inhospitable academic environment is by band-
ing together. In 1981, outreach directors of Middle East centers created
the Middle East Outreach Council, an affiliate of the Middle East Studies
Association. Similarly, faculty and staff from Africa centers have joined to-
gether in the Outreach Council of the African Studies Centers, an affiliate of
the African Studies Association. Outreach professionals employed by Latin
American centers have created the Consortium in Latin American Stud-
ies, which sponsors meetings and promotes collaboration. The Committee
About Teaching on Asia engages faculty and staff from Asia centers funded
under the NRC program (Friedlander, Marshall, and Metzler, 2003).
By working together through these organizations, outreach coordina-
tors have been able to carry out some activities at a national level. For
example, the Outreach Council of the African Studies Center has estab-
lished a program of book awards to recognize the best books on Africa for
elementary school students and for adolescents, and it engages with major
publishers, encouraging them to use NRC faculty with Africa expertise as
authors and consultants. Similarly, since 1994, the Consortium in Latin
American Studies has offered annual Americas Awards, recognizing the best
English and Spanish literature and nonfiction works that accurately portray
Latin America, the Caribbean, or Latinos in the United States. The award
winners are well publicized, providing a focus used by Latin American
NRCs to develop lending libraries and curriculum materials (Friedlander,
Marshall, and Metzler, 2003). The Committee on Teaching About Asia
has sponsored a series of annual symposia on Asia in the curriculum, most
recently at UCLA on October 12-15, 2006.
In addition to these region-specific collaborations, in 2006 the Wisconsin
International Outreach Consortium convened a national conference focused
on international outreach.
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OUTREACH TO OTHER AUDIENCES
During the committee’s site visits, university staff cited multiple exam-
ples of outreach to other audiences, including the media, government, and
the public, although there appeared to be a particular emphasis on K-12.
Heritage Communities
Some Title VI centers in urban areas where there are large heritage
language communities are working to preserve and develop the language
skills of those communities. For example, the San Diego State University
(SDSU) LRC worked with the local Arabic heritage community to establish
after-school programs in Arabic language and culture (Leonard, 2004). By
early in 2007, about 50 learners were participating in twice-weekly Arabic
instruction at three sites in the San Diego region. Building on this suc-
cess, the LRC has collaborated with other heritage language communities
to establish after-school language programs in Kurdish, Mixtec (a native
Mexican language spoken by large and growing heritage language popula-
tions in California and Mexico), Punjabi, and Turkish.
The SDSU LRC is also helping to train more teachers to meet the
unique needs of heritage language learners. For example, the center devel-
oped an online assessment to evaluate the Spanish skills of applicants to the
university’s Bilingual Cross-Cultural Language and Academic Development
Certificate Program. The assessment, which uses authentic reading and au-
dio texts selected specifically for appropriateness to the bilingual educator’s
context, has proven a reliable predictor of future teachers’ readiness for a
summer immersion experience in Queretaro, Mexico (San Diego State Uni-
versity, 2007). The LRC is also working to influence larger state policies
affecting language teaching. The California Commission on Teacher Cre-
dentialing has established a new system of assessment and certification for
teachers of Tagalog/Filipino, and the LRC is working with the commission
to establish certification in other heritage languages. State assessment and
certification systems are essential to guide colleges of education in creating
specialized teacher preparation programs and preparing the next generation
of heritage teachers.
In another example, the SDSU Center for Latin American Studies (an
NRC) has collaborated with the LRC and local heritage speakers to develop
instruction in Mixtec. Local heritage speakers helped SDSU to develop Mix-
tec instruction through both a summer immersion program and on campus
during the academic year. The summer immersion program employs teach-
ers in Mexico who are native Mixtec speakers and have been trained in
language acquisition and pedagogy.
In addition, as discussed in the next chapter, Title VI recently funded
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an LRC focused on heritage speakers with the goal of establishing a field
of heritage language acquisition.
Media
In site visits, the committee learned about several efforts to share inter-
national and area expertise with the media. At New York University, the
associate director of the Middle East NRC (a center that offers a master’s
degree with a concentration in journalism) demonstrated a website for
journalists that was created in 2006 to expand the center’s role in providing
support to the media. The website (http://www.middleeastdesk.org) high-
lights current events in the Middle East and links to experts knowledgeable
about those recent events and related topics. Some 950 journalists have
subscribed to daily emails with alerts on middleeastdesk.org updates.
At UCLA, federally funded area centers have reached out to Holly-
wood. For example, the Africa Center, which conducts an array of out-
reach activities targeted to K-12 education and the public, initially ignored
requests for help from film and television producers. Later, however, the
center decided to respond. Africa center experts helped the producers of ER
create an episode set in Africa, provided information for a story line about
Nigeria in Lost, and provided information used in both the film Hotel
Rwanda and in a series of related documentaries about Rwanda.
The UCLA International Institute (an NRC grantee) has created two
online publications of interest to journalists as well as the public. AsiaMe-
dia is a daily online publication with news about and from all varieties of
news media in Asia. Journalists and scholars from across Asia, as well as
from UCLA and other U.S. institutions, contribute material and make use
of the site. The staff writers are UCLA students and recent graduates, who
learn about journalism through a three-month internship program (Uni-
versity of California, Los Angeles, 2006a). Staff of the UCLA International
Institute provided web traffic data indicating that the number of visitors
to AsiaMedia more than doubled over two years, growing from 591,245
in 2005 to 927,982 in the first 9 months of 2006. The average number
of daily website visits grew from 4,542 in 2005 to 12,420 over the first 9
months of 2006.
Asia Pacific Arts is a biweekly online magazine (http://www.asiaarts.
ucla.edu) that looks at Asian arts and culture from a global perspective,
including reporting on the intersection between Asian and Asian American
entertainment. The magazine covers new film releases from a range of larger
(e.g., China, India, Japan) and smaller (e.g., Thailand, the Philippines, Tai-
wan) Asian nations. The magazine also reviews popular and classical music,
art and photography, and television and news media from and about Asia.
Data from the UCLA International Institute indicate the site had 699,460
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visitors in 2005, the vast majority of whom (621,006) visited more than
once. The average number of daily visits to the website grew from 3,044
in 2005 to 3,886 in 2006.
Government
Title VI centers share their expertise on world languages and regions
with federal, state, and local governments primarily by training future
and current government employees (see Chapter 6). In addition, some
outreach activities are designed to engage and inform government officials.
For example, the UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies (an
NRC) convened a conference on human trafficking in April 2006. Among
other speakers, a Hungarian brigadier general who oversees the Southeast
European Cooperative Initiative (SECI) Regional Center for Combating
Transborder Crime discussed new approaches to combating human traf-
ficking and other regional crimes. Representatives of the Los Angeles Po-
lice Department participated in the conference, gaining new information
to help combat trafficking and forging relationships with their overseas
counterparts. The UCLA Latin America NRC participates in the Governor’s
Economic Council and the California State Senate’s California-Brazil part-
nership initiative.
Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (part
of the NRC-Middle East that also includes the Project for Jewish Civili-
zation, the Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding, Department of
Arabic and Islamic Studies, and the Laungier Library) offers public semi-
nars on current political topics of interest to U.S. and foreign officials and
policy makers. For example, some of the most recent NRC-funded events
include a January 2006 Arabic Teacher Training Workshop (cosponsored
by the Department of Arabic Language); the Media/IT in the Arab World: A
Workshop in January 2006 (cosponsored by the Center for Contemporary
Arab Studies); and A Conversation with Cynthia Ozick (cosponsored by the
Program for Jewish Civilization) held on February 18, 2006.
Business
While most outreach to business is conducted by business schools with
support from CIBER or BIE grants (see Chapter 10), some NRC grantees
also conduct outreach to business. For example, the Latin America Center
at UCLA operates an “associates” program which links faculty members
and students with business partners. The program focuses on identifying
business questions and locating experts with the answers. During a site
visit, center staff members said that most of the companies they approach
had never thought of working with a Latin America Center, but now they
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agreed it is a good idea. A company in Sao Paulo has expressed interest
in sponsoring a symposium with this NRC, and the NRC also works with
IBM in Argentina. The UCLA Asia Institute, in a joint project with the
university CIBER, has created a three-year program for graduate students.
The students will spend time conducting business research in Asia, followed
by writing and publication on the UCLA campus.
The Public
In addition to this array of outreach activities targeted to specific
audiences, LRC and NRC grantees support outreach for the public. For
example, many NRC-funded area studies centers at Indiana University
collaborate to support the city of Bloomington’s annual Bloomington Mul-
ticultural Festival, with foods, entertainment, and art from their respective
world regions.
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION OUTREACH
ED also engages in outreach to grantees, the larger international educa-
tion community, and the public. The committee was told that staff of the
International Education Programs Service (IEPS) office are planning a na-
tional meeting focused on outreach in fall 2007. However, public comments
to the committee indicate a need for improved dissemination of information
about the IEPS office and particularly about materials produced by grant-
ees. For example, some individuals told the committee that they would like
easier access to the research and studies supported by the IRS program.
Indeed, the committee encountered some difficulty in locating and obtaining
some research reports and studies produced with IRS funding.
In interviews conducted during the committee’s eight site visits, some
grantees also reported difficulty in understanding the goals and require-
ments of IEPS program officers. Faculty at one university reported that
IEPS program officers had communicated different and conflicting mes-
sages about the degree of importance of evaluation in applications for the
NRC and CIBER programs. In public discussions with the committee, IEPS
program officers acknowledged that they lacked time for adequate com-
munication with grantees, including on-site visits, given the limited staff
available.
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Although the Title VI/FH programs have a role in helping to address
the need for both horizontal and vertical internationalization, the programs
were not designed to—and, given their limited funding, cannot be expected
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to—meet all of these needs. In Chapter 12, the committee recommends that
ED develop a comprehensive strategy for international and foreign language
education from kindergarten through graduate school—a strategy that
would integrate Title VI/FH programs with other federal programs targeted
to K-12 education.
The Title VI/FH programs are targeted primarily to higher education,
and something that the U.S. higher education system should be expected to
do best is to prepare future teachers. The committee found much less evi-
dence of collaboration with schools of education to prepare future teachers
than of professional development for current K-12 teachers.
Conclusion: The need for teachers with foreign language and interna-
tional expertise is great.
Recommendation 4.1: The Department of Education should increase
incentives in the application process for National Resource Centers
and Language Resource Centers to collaborate with schools or colleges
of education on their campuses in the development of curriculum, the
design of instructional materials, and teacher education.
By collaborating with schools of education, NRCs and LRCs could
enhance the content of the curriculum used to train teachers and directly
impact the international knowledge that teachers bring to their classrooms.
However, as discussed below, to make this effective, ED must support these
efforts by working with state and local education authorities, helping them
to recognize the importance of developing future teachers’ knowledge of
foreign languages and world regions and to create demand for teachers with
appropriate education and training.
Incentives that ED might use to encourage these collaborations include
adding a competitive priority that awards additional points to NRC or
LRC applications that can demonstrate a formal collaboration agreement
recognized by both the applicant and a school(s) or college(s) of education
with a positive teacher-training record. Although linkages might be most
easily forged at universities that include a school of education, NRCs and
LRCs at other universities could establish collaborations with nearby edu-
cation schools. Another option would be to award separate grants to NRCs
specifically for conducting collaborative outreach to colleges of education
in the competitive grant process.5 Or ED may encourage proposals that
include such collaborations with larger grant awards. This might, however,
place institutions without a school of education at a disadvantage.
5 The committee thinks that this would be possible under the “outreach grants and summer
institutes” provision in the current statute.
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To best learn from its own experience, ED should systematically iden-
tify existing collaborations between Title VI-funded programs and schools
of education and share information about these approaches with the rest
of the Title VI community.
In addition to supporting existing collaborations, ED should pursue
other opportunities to encourage schools of education to prioritize language
training and the development of international expertise. Because curriculum
decisions are made largely by state and local education agencies, which
drives demand for teachers, ED might undertake additional activities that
would assist or encourage them to incorporate foreign language learning,
geography, and area studies into their educational standards, including:
• Making language and area studies a substantive priority for one
of the new national comprehensive centers, or fund a new center with that
mission. Comprehensive technical assistance centers help low-performing
schools and districts close achievement gaps and meet the goals of the No
Child Left Behind Act of 2001. In addition to regional centers, ED supports
five content-focused centers focusing on key issues related to the goals of
the act (U.S. Department of Education, 2007a).
• Charging one or more of ED’s regional education laboratories with
research and development of approaches to linking schools of education
with Title VI centers. ED funds 10 regional education laboratories across
the nation, whose primary mission is “to serve the educational needs of des-
ignated regions, using applied research, development, dissemination, and
training and technical assistance and to bring the latest and best research
and proven practices into school improvement efforts” (U.S. Department
of Education, 2007d). With this general mission, the laboratories conduct
applied research and development projects on a variety of topics, such as
raising achievement in mathematics and science and improving elementary
schools.
• Creating a clearinghouse for information on best practices in the
field or incorporating foreign language learning as a topic area of ED’s
What Works Clearinghouse.
• Convening a national conference to showcase positive examples
of integrating foreign language and area studies into the K-12 curriculum,
including the results of language immersion schools.
Each of these efforts would highlight the importance of foreign lan-
guage and international knowledge that has been embraced by the secretary
of education, while also providing models of promising practices to the
field. Ultimately, however, infusion of foreign language and cultural instruc-
tion in the K-12 classroom may depend on establishing a national priority
