Successful College and University Foreign Language Programs, 1995–99: AA-Granting Institutions

This is the third article to report on a project undertaken by the MLA to discover what factors make foreign language programs successful. The proj ect was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In the fall of 1999, the MLAs Office of Foreign Language Programs conducted a survey to collect data relating to rising enrollments and specific practices of depart ments of foreign languages. In parts 1 and 2 of our report, the focus was on BA-, MA-, and PhD-granting departments and institutions (Goldberg and Welles; Goldberg, Lusin, and Welles); less emphasis was placed on AA granting institutions. Because they are so different in structure and function, we decided to analyze language departments in AA-granting institutions in a separate article. While our project was undertaken to discover what features make foreign language programs successful, the results described in this report are not proof of a causal connection between program features and rising enrollments. What the results show are co-occurrences (associations, correlations) between features and enrollments; the frequency, strength, and circumstances of these co-occurrences do, however, suggest a causal link. We defined successful departments as those with increasing enroll ments. While such a quantitative measure excludes more subtle and com plex ways of determining departmental success, it is a consistent measure and one often used by administrators to evaluate a department's progress. In parts 1 and 2 of our report, BA-, MA-, and PhD-granting language