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Does your department offer
any study abroad opportunities?
What types of internship
opportunities do you have available?
Why are internship programs
important to the program?
Do students present
papers at conferences?
What publications are
produced by the EFLJ Department?
Have your students or
faculty had work published recently?
Does your
department offer any study abroad opportunities?
Yes! Almost 40 percent of majors in the EFLJ
Department have taken advantage of study abroad opportunities.
Past destinations have included Spain, Mexico, France, Germany,
Ireland and England.
The department offers exchange programs with
universities in Angers, France and Bamberg, Germany that enable
students to study for one or two semesters at the host university.
Students have the opportunity to immerse themselves
in a foreign country and increase their language skills by
participating in intensive three-week study programs currently
offered in Mexico and France.
Mexico
Students
attend classes at the Spanish Language
Institute in Cuernavaca, Mexico each
morning Monday through Friday for
a total of 90 hours of instruction.
Students live with middle-class Mexican
families. Students have the opportunity
to travel to Mexico City, the largest
city in the world, and the last weekend
of the trip is spent in Acapulco.
France
In the extraordinary setting of the Loire Valley,
students attend small, personalized French classes Monday
to Friday for three hours per day. Taught by native speakers
who are experts in the teaching of French, each course aims
to develop and improve French speaking, listening, reading
and writing skills. Students become totally immersed in the
French culture by living with French families, and they have
extensive opportunities to enjoy the sights and tourist destinations
in France.
Students travel during Spring Break to London
and Dublin during alternating years. Led by one of the department's
literature faculty, students stay either in hotels or university
housing, attend local theatre performances, tour important
cultural and historical sites and generally make real, local
connections to literature from their courses.
The department also participates in the Outdoor
Semester course, where students spend over two weeks of the
semester hiking, canoeing and camping throughout the western
United States as part of their coursework. Last year, students
followed in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark, traveling north
to Great Falls, Montana and the upper Missouri River.
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What types
of internship opportunities do you have available?
All journalism, public relations and technical
communication students complete at least one professional internship
during their junior or senior years. Almost 60 percent of English
majors completed an internship or student teaching.
Students complete internships both on and off
campus. On-campus internships have included working in the
Public Relations Office, handling public relations and publications
for the Music Department or as serving as student assistants
in the Writers Workshop course.
Off campus, students have completed internships
at St. Joseph Cablevision, St. Joseph News-Press, St. Joseph
School District Technical Center, Channel 4 Television in Kansas
City, KQ-TV in St. Joseph, Heartland Health, the United Way,
St. Joseph Family YMCA and others.
Past internships for foreign language majors
have included web translation, translation of local social
service documents and tutoring in schools and for individuals.
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Why are
internship programs important to the program?
Experience
in the field is vital to each student’s
education. Internships provide students
with a valuable hands-on experience that is difficult to
duplicate in the classroom.
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Do students
present papers at conferences?
Students have opportunities to attend and present
papers at regional and national conferences. This past year,
13 students from one class presented at a conference in San
Diego. Such a number of student papers from one school and
one class are quite rare.
Students have opportunities to attend professional
conferences in foreign language education. Foreign language
students in the Honors Program present their research at national
honors conferences.
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What publications
are produced by the EFLJ Department?
The department
produces “Canvas,” a
student literary journal that provides a forum of writings
and photography of students, alumni
and faculty each year.
The Mochila Review, an international journal
of prose and poetry, is published annually. The journal takes
its name from the local Pony Express, whose riders used specially
designed leather boxes, or mochilas, to carry letters
from writers to readers across the expansive West.
Students also have the opportunity to work on
the Griffon yearbook or the weekly student newspaper, the Griffon
News.
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Have your
faculty members had work published recently?
Two
professors published books with national publishing companies
during 2004-2005. One professor published
a college-level textbook, “Storycrafting:
A Process Approach to Writing News.”
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