The increased globalization of communication has made knowledge of foreign languages crucial for Americans in many fields. That is why the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts has expanded students' opportunity to gain proficiency in using languages other than English.

A recent innovation in LSA is the Language Across the Curriculum program (LAC), which combines language with such other disciplines as psychology or history to offer students an opportunity to strengthen and deepen their knowledge of German or Spanish.

"LAC is the future of language instruction at this university," said LAC committee chair and German Prof. Frederick Amrine. "We are committed to internationalization, and if that means anything, it means to study not only the literature of the country as a foreign language student, but other subjects as well. Language Across the Curriculum gives new definition to the language requirement."

The program is less than two years old but already offers a variety of classes for students to choose from. A psychology/German mini-course titled "Freud auf Deutsch" offers students a chance to read Freud's original lectures in German. "Calculus auf Deutsch" provides an unusual opportunity to do calculus work in German.

Besides mini-courses, LAC offers additional sections for normal lectures such as History 476, "Latin America: The Colonial Period." The extra section reads and discusses the material in Spanish, and students earn one additional credit for the extra work.

"The program here is just a baby," said Lynn Carbón-Gorrell, an assistant professor of Spanish linguistics who was involved in a similar program at Penn State. "Only Spanish and German are involved right now. But it is definitely growing."

One way the program can really grow is if students take advantage of the "contract" LAC option, which involves independent work for extra course credit. Amrine said any student can approach any professor and set up a program to get LAC credit. So far, however, no student has contracted additional independent LAC credit for a normal English-speaking course.

"We need to be moving toward more interdisciplinary types of courses," said Carbon-Gorrell. "History, business and all sorts of students need to understand that language is useful to them, and we need to provide them with courses that can teach them language and also be interesting to them."