Penn African languages program 'leads the pack'

University President Amy Gutmann recently received a note from The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education congratulating Penn for having one of the most comprehensive programs in African languages in the nation.

"Looks like Penn leads the pack," the note read.

The African Studies Center has been one of Penn's well-kept secrets. It currently offers 11 African languages, comparing very favorably with peer institutions' programs. In 2001-2002, African centers across the nation offered a total of only 25 African languages.

The languages offered by Penn span the three major regions of Africa -- four languages from the South, three from the East and four from the West. The program strives to give students the necessary training to be able to do serious field work and research in a specific African region.

"We try to cover as many countries as possible, so it's not that these four languages [in West Africa] are only spoken in four countries," African Language Coordinator and Zulu instructor Audry Mbeje said. "They are native languages across countries in West Africa."

Penn has offered a comprehensive program in African languages since 1993, when the African Studies Center became one of nine National Resource Centers focusing on Africa. The program began receiving federal funding from the Department of Education.

As an NRC, the African Studies Center has focused on providing resources to a diverse constituency -- both within the University and in the wider community. The enrollment in the language courses is not large -- around 60 students for the whole program -- but it is diverse.

The program serves both undergraduate and graduate students, along with students from Haverford, Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr colleges. This semester two faculty members are even enrolled in the classes.

College sophomore Andrea Seligman, who has been taking Swahili since her freshman year, said that her experience has been unique and rewarding. She participated in one of the center's study-abroad programs in Tanzania during the summer. The program made the culture and people of the language come to life.

"I just loved Tanzania," Seligman said. "It was a really rewarding application of the knowledge I have been working on."

Most gratifying for her was the ability to converse with Tanzanians on everyday topics in their own language, something that would not have been possible had she not taken the Swahili courses ahead of time.

One of the center's main goals is to create area study experts, who it is hoped will go on to research in Africa in a variety of fields -- from diplomacy to business to medicine.

Although a number of languages are staples in the program, some are offered in accordance with student needs. For example, former African Studies Center Director Lee Cassanelli said, a graduate student who planned to do research on nation-building in Eritrea and Ethiopia requested to study Amharic, the language of the region.

The center also began offering Setswana after a group of medical students planning to do research in HIV/AIDS programs in Botswana expressed interest in taking the language.

"Being in a big city is good because there are a lot of African immigrants here," Cassanelli said, adding that this pool enables the center to find native speakers in Philadelphia to teach the courses.

The inherent difficulty with teaching the least commonly taught languages is that student demand is limited, as is funding. It is impossible for the University to employ 10 full-time lecturers to teach these courses. Therefore, outside native speakers are an extremely valuable resource. Their skills are enhanced by the training they receive under the supervision of Mbeje and the Penn Language Center -- the umbrella organization for the teaching of all less commonly taught languages.

And Mbeje said that so far finding lecturers has not been a problem.

"We have very good instructors who make the teaching go smoothly because they are native teachers," Mbeje said. Lecturers "are conversant in the language and with the culture, which is what students want to know -- not only the language, but the life of the people who speak the language."

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