The Michigan State University (MSU) has been granted $1.2 million to develop new less commonly taught language courses, The State News reports.
Center for Language Teaching Advancement, or CeLTA, faculty have been awarded funding by the Mellon Foundation for 38 months to create new language programs through a partnership with the Big Ten Academic Alliance.
Though MSU already offers 29 less-commonly taught languages, or LCTLs, CeLTA faculty hope to add many more, including Armenian, Burmese, Gaelic, Hmong, Serbo-Croatian and Sinhala, according to the Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages’ website.
The new LCTL courses will be taught via CourseShare, an online distance-learning program used throughout Big Ten Academic Alliance schools.
Although LCTL learners agree that access to these languages is important, some students think the university could be doing more.
“Hopefully in the future MSU will show its commitment by hiring a full-time, in-person teacher instead of relying solely on digital language instruction,” doctoral student Shelbi Meissner said.
