Main: Language Diversity Initiative

B. PROJECT OVERVIEW
The Language Diversity Initiative was established to create and expand opportunities for students' languages other than English to be recognized, used, and even enhanced, during students’ progress towards graduation. Further, LDI was established to promote Hunter College and its students as rich resources for the larger New York community, e.g. Hunter’s potential to provide language services in order to improve cross-linguistic communication in health care, social services, and commerce within New York City and beyond.

To accomplish our objectives, the Language Diversity Initiative was designed to be a multi-level and multi-strategic initiative to change campus climate and faculty practices. From 1999 until 2002, LDI worked closely with faculty and staff to reflect on and experiment with pedagogy, and to develop innovative curricula. The Language Diversity Initiative, in conjunction with the Office of the Provost, provided course releases to faculty to develop and implement new pedagogy and/or curricula. LDI also sponsored campus-wide events to recognize Hunter's linguistic diversity (Hunter students speak over 100 languages and dialects) and to identify academic and career opportunities in which students can use their heritage languages.

We see the Language Diversity Initiative as a stimulus and a resource for change. The three products – faculty handbook, student language self-assessment protocol and video - developed by faculty and staff during the project cycle grew directly from lessons learned from faculty and student surveys, focus groups and individual interviews as well as from campus wide events. The products, recently completed, have been circulated. Because of the slow pace of institutional change, it will take time before they are integrated into classroom practice and affect the climate at Hunter. LDI's impact on an expanding group of faculty (full-time and adjunct) and staff is already very much in evidence and is reflected in many of the comments we have included in this report. To further this process, the products were transferred to the new Teaching Learning Center (TLC) at Hunter, and made available for all faculty to use as a resource in their courses.