The University of Arizona College of Humanities is developing a slate of new courses designed to infuse foreign language and culture content into courses in business, healthcare and other professional programs.
Funded with a $99,999 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the three-year project will support faculty members designing new courses, or expanding the focus of existing courses, says Carine Bourget, the grant’s principal investigator.
This grant was one of six funded proposals out of 59 submissions for this cycle of the NEH’s Humanities Initiatives at Hispanic Serving Institutions Grants program. The University of Arizona earned the Hispanic Serving Institution designation in 2018, the first of the three state universities to do so.
The project extends initiatives already underway to strengthen the connection between humanities study and career success by designing courses that blend the humanities with specific professional training, says Bourget, Professor of French and Francophone Studies and COH Director of Special Projects. The new courses will target fields like business, health care, law, foreign affairs and hospitality, based on student needs analyses of the College of Humanities’ departments, and are expected to continue as part of the departments’ regular offerings.
“This proposal is spurring curricular innovation across our departments,” Bourget says. “We’ve been doing this for a long time already, but this grant enables a larger scale effort to show our students explicitly how these skills they gain from the humanities are essential in their professional careers.”
The courses and professors include:
- Africana Studies 463: Doing Business In/With Africa: The Cultural Perspective
Bayo Ijagbemi (Africana Studies)
- How To Do Business In China
Jiang Wu (East Asian Studies)
- Italian Business
Letizia Bellochio (French & Italian)
- French for Health
Carine Bourget (French & Italian)
- Portuguese For Healthcare Professionals
Ana Carvalho (Spanish and Portuguese)
- Health And Illness In The Spanish And Portuguese-Speaking World
Benjamin Fraser (Spanish and Portuguese)
- Law And Order BCE: Courtroom Oratory In Greece And Rome
Rob Groves (Classics & Religious Studies)
- International eTwinning for The Humanities Initiative: Russian for Foreign Affairs
Liudmila Klimanova (Russian & Slavic Studies)
- German For Professional Usage: The Hospitality Industry
Barbara Kosta (German Studies)
“This NEH grant is another example of the world class reputation of our faculty. Their savoir faire in humanizing the future of work is indeed increasingly sought after on and off campus,” says College of Humanities Dean Alain-Philippe Durand.