Back to the Drawing Board? Articulation and Outreach Revisited

Abstract

It's a puzzle how the pieces fit together?articu lation, momentum, and outreach?though no mystery that they have strategic importance for German programs today. The modest enrollment gains reported by the MLA (MLA Survey; Welles) have not diminished our challenges, rang ing from financial exigencies to public perceptions that our field is marginal (Dasenbrock 63). Against the background of calls to action prompted by the No Child Left Behind Act (cf. Rosenbusch), my ob servations reflect on how German departments at postsecondary institutions envision K-16 articula tion, gauge momentum, and create outreach, es pecially through public websites. Under optimal conditions, these efforts should express the robust interconnection of teaching, research, and service. Often instead they foreground disjunctives in the architecture of our profession at large (Rosenbusch 258). Outreach in my own department has already undergone a rapid evolution that would have been difficult to imagine a decade ago, an upgrade that is by no means complete. Our work suggests that three approaches are helpful in improving the out reach profile: dialogues with our audiences, tar geted outreach events, and informational publica tions. When Mary Louise Pratt argued from her posi tion as MLA President that we need language pipe lines at every level, she focused on building con nections. Suggesting that With relatively little new infrastructure, American high schools can become the pipeline to advanced language study linked to cultural, scholarly, and professional expertise (Pratt 117), she convincingly recommended a powerful collaboration between colleges and uni versities and secondary school teachers. Ideally, this network would provide opportunities and ac cess in the form of scholarships, enrichment pro grams, summer intensive courses, study abroad, or work in the so-called Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLs) (118). Because Pratt's optimism about the future of foreign languages in the U.S. seems to many col leagues to speak more to the growth of Spanish than to conditions for German, the pragmatic rela tionship between the language system and our field bears further scrutiny. Infrastructure questions have, of course, received extensive attention in German. Beyond the pride that we take in the indi vidual energy that builds and maintains our pro grams, significant effort has been devoted to identi fying articulation obstacles that have hamstrung college and university German programs. Analysis of curricular disconnects at the stage when high school students enter the postsecondary system has produced constructive recommenda tions from the AATG, Byrnes, Chavez, and others (Chavez; Andress et al.; Byrnes Future). Improved integration of students into collegiate studies has also been facilitated through the creation of stan dards for K-16 education, including the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines, the Standards for Foreign Language Learning, and other disciplinary recom mendations (see Appendix). As aspirational docu ments, these standards commendably voice broad professional consensus about student achieve ment. Moreover, they have generated consultative expertise, dissemination activity, and professional renewal for teachers. This strategic activity has been especially con structive in shaping systems where large-scale edu cational ecologies prevail. To cite one example, German departments at large Midwestern univer sities have generally enjoyed solid enrollments that correlate with the debut of the Proficiency Guide lines and subsequent attention to promoting verti