Scott Windham, professor of German in the Department of World Languages and Cultures, presented Elon’s interdisciplinary German Studies board as a case study at the German Studies Association conference in late September.
Scott Windham, professor of German in the Department of World Languages and Cultures, participated in a three-day seminar called “Re-envisioning the German curriculum, twenty years on.” The goal of the seminar was to chart the ways in which German and German Studies programs have evolved in the nearly twenty years since the Modern Language Association issued a call for dramatic curricular and programmatic change in 2007.
Seminar participants included Elon, Georgetown, MIT, Princeton, Columbia, Emory, Arizona State, Waterloo, Arizona, Vermont, Franklin & Marshall, Furman, and other highly-regarded German and German Studies programs. Participants discussed progress made over the past two decades and still-needed curricular, programmatic, structural, and administrative reforms in order to ensure the vitality of German and other language programs in the coming decades.
Professor Windham’s contribution to the seminar was to position Elon’s interdisciplinary German Studies board as a way to introduce interdisciplinarity into language programs in a structured and thoughtful way, and to boost the reach of language programs. Elon’s German Studies board consists of 16 members from four schools, ten departments and three staff units.