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, KQTV 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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