The Council of Academic Affairs unanimously approved two new courses in the world languages and cultures department.

CAA unanimously approved a new course with revisions Medical Spanish for Health Care and Allied Fields, WLS-3012, which will be a course available to all students after taking the prerequisite Intermediate Spanish II or Intermediate Spanish II, Honors. 

Christiane Eydt-Beebe, the department chair of world languages and cultures, said there has been an interest in a similar course.

“So about two years ago, we started offering Spanish for the health professions first as a face to face class and then online,” Edyt-Beebe said. “And we’ve had very good enrollment in that course especially because it also includes the foreign language graduation requirement and with the growth of health status, we have had students from biology, psychology and other areas take an interest in medical Spanish as well. So some time ago, an advisor from health alerted us that there was interest in an upper division course because many Health Studies majors minor in Spanish, so they thought it might be a good idea to offer an APA revision course that would contribute to the completion of the minor in Spanish.”

Medical Spanish for Health Care and Allied Forces, or short name Medical Spanish, is a third year Spanish course with a focus on vocabulary and grammar needed by health care professionals in allied fields to be able to communicate with people who speak primarily Spanish.

It is a three credit hour course in the lecture format with a standard grading format.

It is planned for the course to be available in the spring 2023 semester.

An equivalent course exists as WLF-3000 Spanish Grammar in Context. For students who take the Medical Spanish course, they cannot take Spanish Grammar in Context and receive credit for it.

CAA approved another new course proposed by the world languages and cultures department.

CAA unanimously approved with revisions a new course French and Francophone Cinema, WLF-3307, which will be available for students in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences who have taken WLS-2202G Intermediate French 2 or have permission from the department chair.

Students within other colleges cannot take this course.

Eydt-Beebe said a similar course, WLF-3300 Hispanic Cinema, was well received by students and the department wants to create a similar course focused on French cinema.

“So in world languages, we frequently use film as a medium to access the culture and the history of countries where the language is spoken,” Eydt-Beebe said. “So in Spanish, we already have an established course… in French so far, we only offer cinema as part of our special topics courses. But our students are very interested in exploring foreign films, blame it on Netflix, there’s a lot of movies on Netflix. And so we decided to offer a course of interest discussing these films, but also that seems to progress in the old proficiency level to the advanced low, which is the target for foreign language majors at the end of four years.”

French and Francophone Cinema will have students in the course analyze classic and contemporary French cinema and explore the relevance in present francophone culture. 

This course is a three credit hour course in a lecture format with the standard grading scale.

French and Francophone Cinema is planned to be available for the spring 2023 semester.

There was a proposal for a revision to the program of electrical engineering, which was tabled to the next meeting.

Due to several needed amendments to the proposal, CAA tabled this action item for the next CAA meeting.

This proposal would include changing the course Internship in Electrical Engineering, EEN-4275, to be changed from a core course for the program to an elective course within the electrical engineering major program.

CAA is still looking for more representatives due to the current risk of not meeting quorum if multiple people on the council have to miss a meeting. 

CAA is in need of representatives for students, which would be a student body member typically from Student Senate, and a representative from the College of Health and Human Services.

Madelyn Kidd can be reached at 581-2812 or at [email protected].