Mission

The mission of the Department of Modern Languages is to enhance the liberal arts education of students through the study of languages, literatures, and cultures as well as through the fostering of participation in diverse ethnic societies at home and abroad, leading to an interdisciplinary and extensive academic preparation so that graduates will contribute to social, educational, and economic amelioration regionally, nationally, and globally.

Program Goals

In order to properly develop critical thinking and communication skills indispensable in the fields of communication, education (pre-K to university), government service, national and international business, language interpretation, law, health, social work, and translation, the Department of Modern Languages has the following objectives:

1. Offer the opportunity to learn another language.

2. Develop the four basic skills of second-language acquisition: understanding, speaking, reading, and writing.

3. Foster an appreciation of other cultures, both nationally and globally.

4. Develop an appropriate level of communication, both orally and in writing, regarding the target language.

5. Prepare students to formulate coherent narratives and sound arguments with the appropriate evidence.

6. Promote an understanding of the worldviews (cosmovisión), philosophies, patterns of social interactions, and cultural/aesthetic creations of the Spanish-speaking world.