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December 07, 2004
Spanish becoming foreign to students
Willful neglect on the part of Garvin Davenport in particular and the administration in general has left Spanish faculty demoralized and students irate.
Enrollments have doubled, tripled, and quadrupled, yet no full-time faculty positions have been added since the time of Ken Janzen, dean of the college at least 20 years ago.
Yet the two full-time faculty members have actually been told by Davenport to “do more with less.” Less help, with more students!
The final blow came last year when PDC put Spanish at the top of its list for faculty hires, but Davenport overruled their decision. Insult was added to injury when Donald Rice retired from the modern languages department, and Spanish was not considered for that vacancy.
It was the third time Spanish was passed over.
The department has lost three positions, two in German and one in French, while Spanish has been forced to “soldier on” and “do more with less.”
Spanish has produced some 55 public school teachers, 10 lawyers interested in immigration, five Ph.D.s, a United Nations administrator, a Fulbright scholar, an AID new hire this year, and numerous NCUR participants and honors recipients.
It has taken students to Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Puerto Rico, and Spain. It has actively combined projects with the departments of law, religion, anthropology, sociology, political science, Latin American studies, theatre, and management.
It is global and interdisciplinary, as called for in the Hamline Plan. It also enhances almost any field of study. Happy alumni have contributed large sums for Spanish, the latest a $20,000 endowment. Yet Spanish is consistently told to “do more with less.”
Part time help and adjuncts in Spanish have saved Hamline enormous amounts of money for decades. Overflow classes are split, and both fill rapidly.
Our adjunct has served for years as part-time help while often carrying a full-time equivalent load in terms of the number of students served. With an ABD, he could have been made full-time, as was done in at least three other disciplines at Hamline. All attempts in that direction failed.
A vibrant, thriving Spanish program at Hamline desperately needs help or it will be destroyed. It needs it now. No more promises, no more rhetoric without results.
It needs new hires, and not just one, but two, as recommended by our evaluator. Replacing someone who might leave does not change anything.
It actually will result in an initial loss of two more courses, one off for the new hire and one off for the new chair.
I am past retirement age and will not be here much longer. While I have offered summer classes for over
15 years to help majors complete their requirements, I’m not going to do that anymore.
I am not a part of Hamline’s future, but you are.
If you want to acknowledge the growing importance of Spanish everywhere and not keep your head in the sand, you need to do something, and it needs to be done now, before it’s too late.
Spanish is booming across the country. It is obvious in marketing, in legal matters, in the way Europeans are devouring Latin American literature and the growing body of works coming out of our Chicano/Latino population.
Have you been to Mercado Central in Minneapolis? Spanish is on the move big time. Ignore it at your peril.
Hamline will be left behind if it continues to overlook and overrule its importance.
Davenport must know that to do more, you must have more. The demand is there, the interest is there, the enthusiasm and outstanding students are there. Do more for them and you will be doing more for
Hamline and its future.
Everyone will benefit.
Barbara Younoszai, Ph.D.
Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies
Posted by msveum at December 7, 2004 11:16 AM