About the School
The School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (SLLC) is the primary academic unit on the University of Maryland's College Park campus devoted to instruction and research in the world's languages, literatures, and cultures. Located in Jiménez Hall on the campus' main mall, the School is a unit within the College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU). Formed in 2001, it consists of the Departments of Asian, East European, and Middle-Eastern Languages and Cultures; French and Italian Languages and Literatures; Germanic Studies; and Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures; and the Second Language Acquisition program. It also houses a number of research centers; the FOLA (Foreign Language Acquisition, individualized instruction) program; and Language Media Services. The School offers study abroad programs in Berlin, Nice, Alcalá, Barcelona, Manheim, Tokyo, and elsewhere. Its Language House, a residential immersion facility for approximately 100 undergraduate students located in St. Mary's Hall, is one of the most successful living-learning programs on campus.
Faculty
The school is home to over 50 tenured and tenure-track faculty, approximately 20 full-time Lecturers, and approximately 40 TAs, making it the second largest unit in ARHU in this respect. Many SLLC faculty enjoy national and international reputations. Five have been named Distinguished Scholar-Teachers, and several are recipients of national fellowships and awards, e.g., Guggenheims and Fulbrights, as well as a variety of national and international prizes, such as the Premio Pablo Neruda, won in 2003 by Professor Emeritus Jose-Emilio Pacheco. There are also a number of distinguished affiliate faculty members in surrounding departments, including Linguistics, Philosophy, Communication, Educational Measurement and Statistics, Psychology, and Hearing Speech Sciences, and at the Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL) and the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC). Every unit in the School has a prolific record of scholarly and creative work, including books, journal articles, and documentary films.
Undergraduate Programs
Both majors and minors are available in each of the following languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Arabic and Persian. An inter-departmental major, and graduate certificate in Middle-East Studies, are in the planning stages. Regularly scheduled courses are also available in Korean, Portuguese, and Hebrew, the latter leading for those interested to a minor or major in Jewish Studies. An additional 10-12 languages are offered through the FOLA program. They include Armenian, Dutch, Hungarian, Hindi, Urdu, Swahili, Tagalog, Polish, Turkish, and Vietnamese. Over 4,000 students per semester take courses in one or more of the School's programs.
The School demonstrates its commitment to superior undergraduate teaching by conducting a week-long orientation and training session for its approximately 40 teaching assistants. A Coordinator of Language Teaching and Testing works to enhance the quality and instruction in the School. The School currently offers a variety of study abroad programs, summer intensive courses and language institutes, along with other opportunities for overseas study through winter-term courses. Students seeking additional information about these and other SLLC programs should consult the undergraduate advisor in each department.
See our undergraduate program information
Graduate Instruction and Research
M.A. and Ph.D. programs are offered in Spanish, French, and German. The presence of a dedicated SLA research facility in Jiménez building enables faculty and students to carry out work on language learning, teaching, and assessment. A new cognitively and psycholinguistically oriented Ph.D. program in Second Language Acquisition (open to students working on any language) was approved in February, 2005, and eighteen students are now in residence. A proposal for a new Ph.D. in Culture and Language Studies is currently in process. Many graduates of all these programs go on to hold faculty positions of their own in the USA and overseas.
In recent years, SLLC graduate students have organized conferences on selected themes, with student presentations and visiting plenary speakers. In April, 2003, the School held its first Graduate Forum, celebrating the achievements of students nearing completion of their graduate studies. The Forum has since become and annual event.
See our graduate program information
