This year, the Modern Languages department launched a program called the Modern Languages Department Fellows (MLD). The goal of this initiative is to have students collaborate closely with the department to promote second language learning. But how would the MLD Fellows themselves describe this program? I interviewed MLD Fellows Malcom Condie ’27, Biology major and Japanese and Animal Behavior double minor, as well as Matthew Adams ’26, Spanish and Philosophy major and History minor, about their experiences and outlook on the program.
Alex Zelaya: How would you describe the MLD Fellows?
Matt Adams: It’s a group of three students and what we do is work directly with members of the department and travel to different language classes at the 100 and 200 levels. We work with certain students once they complete their language requirements to see whether they do or do not want to keep studying, and how we can give them opportunities to continue learning. We work both with the department and students; we are like a middleman for that conversation to be had. Most of our work is to just see what students are feeling about the department and how we can make it better.
AZ: How would you further describe your role and being the ‘middleman’?
MA: Day to day, I’ll email professors. We wanted to get class visits done before class registration, which we got the vast majority of those done, most of the Spanish 100-level courses where there are a lot of students. We work a lot with the adjunct professors as well, which is good because a lot of people don’t necessarily know them. We got to talk to them and see how they are teaching which is really nice. We also got to work for Admitted Students Day. It’s mostly class visits, but a lot of it as well is designing flyers or finding and synthesizing information to give to students about what we [the Modern Language Department] offer…. We wrote some things about that and presented it to admitted students which was really nice and there was a pretty big turnout.
AZ: How would you describe your outlook on the program and what the program can do?
MA: I think it’s really good because in our class visits specifically—another MLD fellow, she made a three-question poll for students that was all anonymous. We asked about the language requirement at Ursinus, what people liked and disliked about the department, and how we could make it better. We got a ton of anonymous answers and now have all of that data. There is a huge amount of potential to make certain aspects of the department more student-oriented, which is really good if we want to maintain people in that department; you need students who are motivated for their own reasons. We’re trying to bridge that gap and create that cooperation between professors and students that isn’t always in every department or could always be stronger.
Alex Zelaya: How would you describe what the MLD Fellows do? Malcom Condie: So, generally in America, less and less people are interested in taking languages, and less and less people are [learning languages] beyond the language requirements. So, our goal is to try and figure out why and get people more interested and involved in language courses here at Ursinus and overall.
AZ: How would you describe your role and what you do?
MC: We’re trying to look for strategies to get people more involved, and obviously the staff and faculty have been trying to do that and usually do. We’re put in there since we are students [to try] and have that student relationship. We kind of already in the mind of being a student, and, outside of our own opinions, [we can] talk to other students and get their opinions. Students may be more honest or willing to speak their opinions with another student rather than faculty. We do a lot of presentations and go to a lot of language classes. That’s our biggest thing at the moment: trying to get information from other students. We also work on flyers and were at admitted students’ day the other day. We make materials to interact with students or interact with students ourselves.
AZ: Where do you see this program going?
MC: This is the first semester they offered this position, and they plan on offering it next year as well. I think next year it is going to be a year-long position next year rather than just a semester. I think it is gonna be similar, more information gathering, and maybe trying to hold events. I know we were kind of short on time this semester due to it only being a semester, but I think that we are just gonna try and do a lot of the same things, just fit in more.
Overall, it seems the MLD fellows have their work cut out for them and will continue to be a new fixture in the Ursinus Modern Languages Department!