UWM-L&S: Faculty Document No. 546

College of Letters and Science Faculty Document No. 546
April 10, 2000

RECOMMENDATION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND THE GRADUATE PROGRAM COMMITTEE THAT THE FACULTY APPROVE THE ADULT/UNIVERSITY-LEVEL TESOL GRADUATE CERTIFICATE PROGRAM

Recommendation:

That the Faculty approve the Adult/University-Level TESOL Graduate Certificate Program as outlined in this document.

Rationale:

See section VI below.

Proposal for an Adult/University Level TESOL Graduate Certificate Program

With this proposal and another being submitted simultaneously to the APCC, the English Department is proposing to establish parallel undergraduate and graduate level certificate programs in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) for adult and university level learners. Students in both of these programs will be required to take the same classes, and to complete a teaching internship; the programs will be differentiated by the fact that students in the "Undergraduate Certificate Program" will take their course work at the U level, while "Graduate Certificate Program" students will enroll at the G level. In each course, the G level students will be given substantial additional assignments requiring analytic application of central course concepts. Graduates of the "Graduate Certificate Program," but not the "Undergraduate Certificate Program," will be eligible to apply up to 12 of the credits earned to the English Department's MA program in English (Plan D: English Language and Linguistics concentration).

Exact Description of Request

The English Department proposes to establish a "Graduate Certificate Program" in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) for adult and university level learners. This program has been designed primarily to provide the training and credential needed by students who wish to teach English to adults abroad; it also will meet the needs of some students who plan to teach English in community colleges, community-based organizations, and job-site English training programs in the U.S. The program will be structured so that students can complete it on an "intensive" basis, taking all the required courses (18 credits) during the last four-week session of the summer and the fall semester, then completing a (3 credit) teaching internship at the beginning of the spring semester. Some of the required courses also will be offered during the spring semester, to accommodate students who wish to complete their program in a more leisurely manner.

The Graduate Certificate Program will be open to graduate non-degree students and to graduate students concurrently enrolled in a master's or Ph.D. program. Applicants will be required to have at least a 2.75 GPA in their undergraduate coursework. Those who are not native speakers of English will also be required to present scores of at least 550 on the TOEFL exam and 45 on the TSE. Students will receive the certificate upon completion of the required course work and internship with a 3.0 GPA. Students who complete the graduate certificate program and wish to continue with the M.A. program in English (Plan D: English Language and Linguistics concentration) will be eligible to apply up to 12 of the 21 credits earned to the degree requirements for the M.A.

The program will be administered by the coordinator of the English Department's graduate concentration in English Language and Linguistics, and it will operate under the supervision of the English Language and Linguistics Advisory Committee. The Committee will evaluate the operation of the certificate program annually, and revise it if necessary. After the program has been in operation for three years, the Committee will assess whether or not the success of the program warrants its continuation.
Title of Program

Adult/University Level TESOL Graduate Certificate Program
Relationship to Mission of Institution

The Provost's Action Plan for the Year 2000 includes the strategic goal of helping students to "acquire technological, multicultural, and international learning experiences that help prepare them to succeed professionally and personally." The College of Letters and Science also has numerous efforts under way to multiply and strengthen its links with institutions overseas, to attract international students, and to provide training to its domestic students that will equip them for international careers.

We anticipate that the program proposed here will enhance these efforts in several ways. First, the roster of courses associated with this program will include units that focus on the rhetorical patterns of different cultures, cross-cultural communication, etc., information that will be of benefit to both domestic and international students interested in "international" careers. Completion of the program of course will also give American students a credential that will allow them to support themselves while traveling or living abroad. And we anticipate that we also may attract to the program a number of international students supported by foreign governments interested in expanding the number of trained TESOL teachers available in their countries. The presence of an academically rigorous, short-term TESOL training program with an internship component is likely to be a drawing point for UWM, relative to other U.S. institutions offering similar programs.
Program Requirements

Students in the certificate program will be required to enroll in G status in the six courses and teaching internship (21 credits total) listed below, and to complete them with a final GPA of at least 3.0.
- English 400 (Introduction to English Linguistics) or Linguistics 350 (Introduction to Linguistics) [at least one of these offered each year during last 4-week summer session, both offered during fall semester and spring semester]
- English 403 (Modern English Grammar) [offered each year during fall semester and spring semester]
- English 404 (Language Variation in English) [offered each year during fall semester]
- Linguistics 420 (Introduction to Second Language Acquisition) [offered each year during fall semester]
- English 565/Linguistics 565(426) (Introduction to Adult/University Level TESOL) [offered each year during fall semester]
- English 567 (Materials for ESL Instruction) [offered each year during fall semester]
- English 569 (Internship in Teaching ESL to Adult Learners) [offered each year during fall and spring semesters] This teaching internship will be completed at one of the internship institutions affiliated with the Certificate Program. The student will complete between 40 and 60 hours of supervised teaching over a period of four to eight weeks. With the approval of the Certificate Program staff, the student will be able to choose among affiliated institutions located in the Milwaukee metropolitan area, elsewhere in the United States, and abroad.
Students will be required to complete requirements for the program within three years of their initial enrollment.
Cost Implications

At the outset, additional funding required for this program will be minimal--there of course will be some costs to advertise the program, but we hope to keep these low by using the Web as one of our primary advertising strategies. All faculty required to teach the certificate program courses already are on payroll, and all the courses, with the exception of the new teaching internship course for certificate students (English 569), already are part of the English Language and Linguistics graduate program concentration. Since English 569 initially will be taught as an overload, it should not force us to incur any instructional costs at the outset.

We anticipate, however, that we will be able to build enrollments each year. Similar programs at Seattle University have graduated over two hundred students per year. At some point in the future, we may need to offer additional sections of one or more of the required courses. But under this scenario, income generated by the program also would be very substantial, probably sufficient to cover additional costs.
Rationale

Over the years, we have fielded numerous inquiries from prospective students who are interested in obtaining some sort of credential that would allow them to teach ESL to adults abroad. [Prospective students interested in teaching children in the U.S. are referred to the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, which runs a program leading to Wisconsin K-12 certification as an ESL teacher.] Many of these students have gone on to enroll in the English Language and Linguistics concentration within our graduate program, which offers the M.A. and Ph.D. to students interested in specializing in Linguistics or Adult/University Level TESOL. Others, however, have expressed dismay upon hearing that it takes most of our M.A. students two to three years to complete the 24 credits of coursework (and 9 credits of prerequisites) and the graduation project we require, and they have gone elsewhere. With the certificate program proposed here, we hope to be able to accommodate students such as these, providing them with a high quality program and a credential that should meet the requirements of most institutions abroad.

We are well equipped to initiate this program. This year we were able to recruit for a specialist in TESOL pedagogy, so we have on staff a full complement of faculty with expertise in linguistics and second language acquisition. We also can draw on the resources provided by the UWM Intensive English program and the ESL composition program. The instructors in these programs are available to help train the students in our certificate program, their classrooms are available for teaching observation sessions, and the contacts they have established with other ESL programs in the U.S. and abroad will allow us to set up a variety of teaching internship sites for our students. In order to enhance our M.A. program, we already are in the process of exploring possible internship sites off-campus in Milwaukee (at Esperanza Unida and MATC), elsewhere in the U.S. (Shenandoah College in Virginia), and abroad (Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Colombia, and The Brazilian Institute for American Studies, Brazil)).

In addition to the strong curriculum and teaching staff we already have assembled, the program we have outlined has two important virtues relative to other existing programs: the possibility of completing the program in a short period of time (approximately 7 months), and the opportunity to complete a teaching internship in the U.S. or abroad. There are very few academic programs in the U.S. that provide fast-track TESOL certificates, and there are virtually none that provide both the fast-track and the possibility of completing a teaching internship in a site overseas. Our program also will be distinguished by the fact that it will be housed in a department that also offers the M.A. and Ph.D. in English Language and Linguistics--the possibility of applying some of the credits accrued in the Graduate Certificate Program to the M.A. in English undoubtedly will appeal to some students.

In the aggregate, these characteristics of the proposed program set it apart from most other academic programs available throughout the nation. We anticipate that these features, along with the excellence of the staff already assembled on campus, will make this program very competitive, and that, with appropriate advertising, we will be able to attract students nationally, and perhaps internationally.

Job prospects for graduates of this certificate program will be plentiful, although they will vary by country. Opportunities in the U.S. will be limited, since the M.A. is required for most university and college-level posts. But some positions will be available in community and technical colleges, community-based organizations, and workplace-based English instruction programs. Abroad, job requirements are most demanding in highly industrialized countries like Japan, but even there, our graduates can expect to do fairly well. Of thirty jobs listed in the Japanese electronic TESOL job list, O-Hayo Sensei, in March, 1998, our certificate program would meet the educational requirements of twenty-one of the positions advertised. In less demanding nations, our graduates will be even better equipped: of forty-six international TESOL positions advertised on the "Edunet" website in March, 1998, for instance, our certificate programs would meet the educational requirements of forty-one. Most of these positions are in Asia, quite a few are in Eastern Europe, and there are a few in Europe, Africa, Mexico, and the Middle East. In other words, students who graduated from this program with the goal of teaching ESL abroad will be very likely to find this sort of employment after graduation.
Proposed Graduate Bulletin Copy for the Adult/University Level TESOL Graduate Certificate Program

Add to the following to the Graduate Bulletin:

ADULT/UNIVERSITY LEVEL TESOL GRADUATE CERTIFICATE PROGRAM

The Adult/University Level TESOL Graduate Certificate Program is designed to meet the needs of non-degree post-baccalaureate students or graduate students enrolled in a master's or Ph.D. program who wish to teach English as a Second Language (ESL) to adults or university level students abroad. Requirements for this program are very similar to those for the "Adult/ University Level TESOL Undergraduate Certificate Program," which accepts undergraduate students and post-baccalaureate special students, but training in the graduate certificate program is more rigorous, and up to 12 credits can be transferred to the English Department's M.A. concentration in English Language and Linguistics.

Admission

Students who wish to apply to the program should submit the following materials to the TESOL Certificate Program Coordinator in the Department of English:
- Transcripts of all college-level academic work, with evidence of a GPA of 2.75 or better
- A statement of purpose
- Two letters of recommendation from persons knowledgeable about the applicant's recent academic and/or work experience
Applicants who are not native speakers of English should also submit:
- Scores of least 550 on the TOEFL exam and 45 on the TSE
Credits and Courses

Students are required to complete the six courses (18 credits) plus teaching internship (3 credits) outlined below. All courses are U/G; graduate certificate program students must enroll as graduate students.
The teaching internship is completed at one of the internship institutions affiliated with the Certificate Program. The site of the internship may be chosen by the student, but must be approved by the Certificate Program staff. The student is expected to complete between 40 and 60 hours of supervised teaching over a period of four to eight weeks.

Students receive the certificate upon completion of all the required coursework and the teaching internship with a GPA of 3.0 or better.

There is a time limit of three years from initial enrollment for completion of the certificate.

Intensive Option

Students who wish to complete the certificate program as quickly as possible should discuss with the program coordinator the possibility of enrolling for the "intensive" option. Under this option, students are able to complete the program in seven or eight months by enrolling in the required courses as follows: