SPSP-CDA Best Practices at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB): Linear and Intentional, Never Set and Done

Abstract

SPSP-CDA Best Practices at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB): Linear and Intentional, Never Set and Done Lourdes Sánchez-López Introduction The Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures (DFLL) at UAB is home to a pioneer program in Spanish for the Professions and Specific Purposes (SPSP) in US higher education. For the last two decades (2000–18), its Spanish curricula have been carefully experimenting and evolving to adjust to the societal needs and professional demands of the twenty-first century. Today, the DFLL offers a minor in Spanish for Business, an undergraduate Spanish for Specific Purposes Certificate, and a major in Applied Professional Spanish. In addition, a professional Spanish language and cultural component has been seamlessly integrated into the newly redesigned three-semester introductory Spanish sequence with a new focus on proficiency and everyday-life use of the language. But curricular transformations never happen in a vacuum, as they are always dictated by the larger contexts that shape them. To put UAB’s SPSP-CDA six-stage evolution into perspective, it is useful to understand various multi-level contextual forces that have influenced it. UAB is one of three public universities in the University of Alabama System. It is the largest employer in the state with more than a 64,000-job employment impact and over a seven billion dollar economic impact (UAB Economic Impact Executive Summary 2017). Birmingham was a major center of activity during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s, and this historical situation contributed to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 (The Civil Rights Act of 1964, nd). Today, Birmingham is the largest metropolitan city in a state with a 4.3% Hispanic population (United States Census Bureau 2017). Thus, local professionals have experienced an increasing need to communicate with Spanish-speaking patients and clients. Originally established as the Medical Center of Alabama in 1945, UAB became independent from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1969. UAB is a major medical center with very strong health-related academic programs. As UAB celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in 2019, it has recently been a highly ranked young university in the nation and among the top ten young universities in the world (The Times Higher Education University Rankings 2018). In 1969, the DFLL was established with a focus on language, literature and culture. Traditionally the university had a language requirement in its core curriculum, but it was eliminated at the end of the 1990s. The DFLL currently offers a major in Foreign Languages and Literatures with tracks in French and Spanish, and a new track in Applied Professional Spanish. It also offers minors in Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Spanish, Spanish for Business, and introductory courses in Arabic, Italian, and Portuguese. A large percentage of students in the major, following national trends, are double majors in Spanish or French and another discipline (biology, chemistry, criminal justice, international studies, pre-medicine, pre-nursing, along with Spanish, are some of the most common double majors). Since 2000 the SPSP-CDA at UAB has evolved into six stages, each resulting from a needs-analysis process, building upon the previous ones. [End Page 491] Stage 1: Development of Individual SPSP Courses (2000–06) With an eye toward the long-term needs of the department, the university and the community, during Stage 1 at the turn of the twenty-first century, the DFLL started developing and offering introductory courses (first and second semester), followed by intermediate courses (third and fourth semester), in Spanish for health care, business, translation, and interpretation. These early CDA courses were never intended to replace the existing literature and culture courses, but to expand the repertoire of offerings to meet the diverse learning needs of a larger pool of students and professional interests. But the SPSP introductory courses (without a general language proficiency pre-requisite) soon failed. As faculty came to the realization that basic knowledge of the language was necessary in order to succeed in SPSP courses, after a first year of experimentation these introductory courses were reassessed and discontinued. The SPSP focus then shifted to intermediate and advanced (fourth semester and beyond) levels. At the intermediate and...