Colorado College wins $509,000 grant for language projects

Colorado College plans to build on success. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation recently awarded the college a two-year, $509,000 grant to encourage the language faculty to create new approaches for teaching languages and to develop placement and proficiency tests. The grant also will support faculty members from across the disciplines who want to achieve greater proficiency and incorporate language study into their courses.

The grant allows CC to expand projects started with a grant Mellon grant won in 2009. Colorado College will use the recently established language-based area studies program in the Mediterranean as a model for structuring other language-based area studies programs in Asia and Latin America.

CC will also continue to develop language study “boot camps,” where courses are targeted toward students bridging high school and college language or those who are picking up a language after a lapse in study. Faculty members started teaching Spanish “boot camp” classes last year and plan to develop similar classes in French and Latin. A longer-term goal is to train additional adjunct faculty and the college’s cultural program coordinators to teach some of these classes.