The last five years seem like a blur of activity, so it is easy to lose track of the changes that have occurred, so here is a recap. In 2023, we were able to hire a professor in Hispanic Linguistics, who specializes in bilingual speech-language pathology, Dr. Javier Jasso, at the same time that the Department of Speech & Hearing Science also hired two professors of bilingual speech-language pathology, Dr. Jissel Anaya and Dr. Nahar Albudoor, which overnight converted the bilingual speech-language pathology program at Ohio State into one of the largest in the country. A graduate certificate program of Bilingual Speech-Language Pathology has now been approved and we are in a good position to channel our strong undergraduate double-majors in Spanish & Speech and Hearing Science into not only the small number of bilingual graduate programs at other universities around the country, but, finally, to our own graduate program. At the same time, we hired Dr. Fernanda Díaz-Basteris, who is a scholar of Latinx comics, which has allowed our department to establish an important connection to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library – the world’s leading archive of this type. Further, we hired Dr. Laura Stigliano, who is a very active and prolific linguistics scholar of theoretical syntax, which has raised the profile of our Hispanic Linguistics program.
In the summer, we strive to support as many of our graduate students as possible, primarily by teaching Spanish or Portuguese in our summer classes, however this is frequently not sufficient to cover all of our students. The establishment of two important endowments, The Donna Alvarado Scholarship and The Stephen and Gail Summerhill Scholarship, via generous gifts from a former student of our program, Donna Alvarado, and a former professor and chair of our department, Steve Summerhill, has greatly improved our ability to support the scholarship of our PhD students, and concomitantly to increase the appeal of our graduate program, through their financial support. Another important development in our graduate program has been the establishment of the Graduate Advising Associate (GAA) program, through which a select number of our graduate students learn important skills related to undergraduate student advising, including how to explain our major, minor and education-abroad programs, under the careful tutelage of our former undergraduate advisor, and now Assistant Director of Graduate and Undergraduate Studies, Rachel Sanabria. The GAAs visit each of our undergraduate courses (more than 100 per semester) and give brief, informative presentations to undergraduate Spanish and Portuguese students who may be enticed to join our undergraduate major or minors.
The corps of associated faculty in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese have also undergone many changes over the last 5 years. The size of our Spanish Language Program classes was reduced from 27 to 22, which required that we hire a large number of new associated faculty to teach the required additional sections, allow us to add new talent to our already talented and dedicated professional language instructors. At the same time, we established a new job category called Professors of Teaching. 3 of our then associated faculty, Elvia Andia Grágeda, Dr. Stephanie Aubry and Dr. Becca Mason-Vergote, applied for and were promoted into these positions. Elvia is a very active scholar of Quechua, who has written Quechua-language fiction, a grammar of Bolivian Quechua and is the only person currently certified by the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) to give the prestigious Oral Proficiency Interview test of language proficiency in Quechua. Stephanie, meanwhile, leads our Spanish in Ohio service-learning course, which puts OSU undergraduates into the Central Ohio Spanish-speaking community as volunteers in health clinics, food pantries, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Franklin County Latino Affairs Commission, and others. Students regularly remark that this experience is their most meaningful during their time at OSU. Becca has taken on the especially challenging task of teaching and coordinating our Spanish composition classes, as well as our honors advising and the important role of coordinating our undergraduate major assessment. It is important for the associated faculty in our department to have opportunities for advancement, such as these. Another example of this includes three other former associated faculty, María Morado Vásquez, Christa Gould and Debra Ponce, who applied for and were hired into staff positions, coordinating the work of the Spanish Language Program, which represents an important investment in the future success of our most visible instructional activity. Thanks to Montserrat Rodà Bencells, we are also now teaching 2 levels of Catalan language classes and Heather Harper has revamped our Business Spanish classes. Heather and Ricardo Sosa, our Heritage Spanish Language coordinator, together also run the US State Department-funded Study of US Institutions (SUSI) Program at OSU during the summer, through the Center for Latin American Studies. SUSI brings bright, young students from all over Latin America to the US for an overview of US institutions, including a stay in Columbus, which our graduate and undergraduate students help with.
In the domain of Heritage Spanish, we have made number of important strides, including Ricardo’s work with Columbus State Community College (CSCC) to get an articulated set of Heritage Spanish classes started there, which are still being created. Heritage Spanish classes are similar to Freshman English Composition courses, or other Language Arts-type courses, in which students who already speak a language get support to use that language, especially in writing, to greater effect. The connection with CSCC is important because there are many students there who could benefit from taking these courses earlier in their academic journey and, perhaps more importantly, because CSCC can teach College Credit Plus courses in high schools much more easily than OSU can, making the accessibility of Heritage Spanish courses in high schools all over Ohio, where they are not currently available, a real possibility. Other developments in Heritage Spanish have included that we now offer a Heritage Spanish Language Teaching Methodology course online during the summer for high school teachers from all over the US, who want to be able to teach not only adult L2 learners, but also to be able to help students who need Heritage Spanish instruction. This course, taught by our friend Dr. Kim Potowski, of the University of Illinois, Chicago; is a very important outreach effort in the direction of making OSU a hub for bilingualism and Heritage Spanish studies. This spring we had a visit from the director of the University of Oregon’s Spanish Heritage Language program, Dr. Sergio Loza, who gave both a linguistics colloquium talk, as well as a workshop for Central Ohio high school teachers. Finally, associated faculty member Dr. María Postigo, this spring taught a course on Spanish Court Interpreting, which stemmed from a request by jurists in the Central Ohio justice system for more Spanish interpreters. María also taught the introductory translation and interpretation course that the Center for Languages, Literatures and Cultures offers in the Autumn.
All of these efforts come together to form our department’s emerging new identity, which we have had the opportunity to discuss and debate, with the facilitation of Assistant Vice Provost Sara Childers and Associate Dean Maurice Stevens. I am excited to see our department grow and develop in these new directions, which will hopefully maintain our department as one of the top programs in the country.