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Entrepreneurial course taught by Professor Golato
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Entrepreneurship Crosses Paths With Foreign Language The students in Andrea Golato’s Spring 2010 course “Educational Entrepreneurship: Teaching Languages Across the Curriculum” were not new to the front of a classroom. While most came from their respective graduate programs where they had experience as TAs, others were current instructors at Parkland College and some were even high school teachers from abroad. All had a focus on foreign language in either literature or linguistics and a desire to develop a more entrepreneurial mindset to teaching. “When people start teaching, they have ideas of what they can or can’t do. Really, many of them just want an opportunity to design and teach their own course,” says Golato, who is an associate professor of Germanic Languages and Literature as well as associate dean at the Graduate College. Identifying where new courses need to be developed is key to Golato’s class, which aims to have students design and teach undergraduate courses in LAC (Language Across the Curriculum). In this year’s Modern Language Association Joblist, about 10% of all job advertisements in modern languages mention the teaching of a course in LAC, or in other words, language courses designed for engineers, medical professions or other subject matters. Additionally, many of these job postings are looking for candidates who have experience in program building, outreach and interdisciplinary connections to other departments. Golato’s course works to meet the needs of these job descriptions. Her curriculum is focused heavily on interdisciplinary connection, and her students come from a variety of academic programs and bring experience in several different languages. Golato recalls one student who saw a need for a course that bridged the gap between Urban Planning and German, and designed a course to fill that void. Golato’s course complements traditional teaching methods courses in that it prepares students in the teaching methodologies specific to LAC courses—content-based instruction, service learning, and case studies. “This course is entrepreneurial in that we’re helping students create a service, to make use of a good opportunity,” says Golato. “We discuss funding and how students go about getting courses approved, and then we learn how to do pitches.” Golato also brought in guest speakers who had experience in entrepreneurial education. “All three speakers delivered the same message to the class: you can be an academic and an entrepreneur. In fact, there are great rewards to having entrepreneurial thinking in academia.” Some of those rewards include a greater preparedness when students go to search for jobs. “Now when students go on the job market, they have a course they’ve designed. They’ve gotten feedback from peers. They’ve selected readings, written an advertisement for the course and come up with a syllabus. Now they have a new part of a teaching portfolio they can take with them.” One of the other things Golato hopes students take with them is a heightened sense of innovation. “Entrepreneurship is a way of revamping academia. It requires innovation. If you always do what’s been done, you risk being stagnant, and you have to take risks.” For Golato, offering this course was a risk that paid off. Prior to becoming a Faculty Fellow for the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership, Golato’s experience ranged from years spent teaching both linguistics and language for specific purpose courses and extensive involvement with LAC to teaching seminars at the Goethe-Institut in Germany. Her current research is focused on conversation analysis and investigates the connection between grammar and interaction on the one hand, and language use in different cultures on the other.“The entrepreneurial component was new to me, and I’ve found that it fits so well into what I’ve been wanting to do for a while.” Golato saw her own students grow as educators, too. “They were already dedicated teachers, but now they have courses they’ve designed that they can confidently take on the job market, and they’ve talked about how to introduce entrepreneurship into these courses. These students have come up with terrific ideas on how to combine language and community service. They’ve truly made some amazing connections.”
Entrepreneurial course taught by Professor GolatoGER 588, Educational Entrepreneurship- Teaching Language Across the Curriculum Approximately 10% of all job advertisements in modern languages in this year’s Modern Language Association Joblist mention Language Across the Curriculum (LAC) courses (e.g., business and entrepreneurship language courses, language for engineering or the medical profession, community based learning, service learning) either as a requirement or as preferred selection criterion. Moreover, the majority of job advertisements specifically mention program building, outreach, and interdisciplinary connections to other departments as desirable interests of potential candidates. This graduate seminar will prepare graduate students to develop and teach undergraduate courses in LAC that incorporate entrepreneurial principles. It will not only teach graduate students about principles and methods of LAC and about various forms of entrepreneurship, but will do so by using entrepreneurial methods. This course thus complements traditional teaching methods courses in that it prepare students in the teaching methodologies specific to LAC courses (content based instruction, community based learning, service learning, simulations, case studies etc.), and in curriculum design and development, and in identifying and “exploiting” opportunities to connect language courses with other subject areas or to the community (measures which typically attract new student populations and foster connections between disciplines). The course provides students with the tools and resources, both theoretical and practical, to engage in educational entrepreneurship and to develop their own LAC course. Visit Course Catalog website for course availability
About Professor Golato |
