This course is designed to introduce students to the key theories, approaches, and concepts governing academic program evaluation and accreditation processes as they apply to language programs broadly and to language institutions as applicable. Topics will include the importance of the mission statement, processes and standards for curricular development, the role of good assessment in language program evaluation, faculty qualifications, professional development and management standards, and language program review processes, as well as the documentation and implementation of program review processes. The course will revolve around weekly readings, interpretation of relevant standards within varied environments of accreditation for each topic, and dialogical discussions regarding each topic in class. An online forum (D2L) will further the discussions in class and support classroom learning. The course is designed for students anticipating leadership roles in educational administration and will lay the groundwork for a future practice that is comprehensive, systematic, and practical.

Just as the foreign/second language teaching profession has developed expectations for excellence in language teaching and professional training, language program administrators are refining the tools and skills needed to become successful leaders in their field. Often this transition from teacher to administrator is viewed as a "promotion" yet little or no additional training is provided to the new administrator. This course will provide an overview of the major issues language program administrators face, including personnel issues, marketing, immigration, advocacy, curricular development and evaluation, and incorporate applied research tasks in these areas.

The course provides an overview of leadership principles and practices along with institutional perspectives on language, literature, and culture program administration in post-secondary education contexts. Participants read and discuss scholarship and analyses of interdisciplinary approaches to principles and practices of leadership, change, institutional contexts, and several specific contexts relating to language, literature, and culture program administration. In addition, this course encourages applied observation of active leaders' work in order to support the development of each participant's own understanding of and preferences for leadership styles, and a choice of possible approaches for further exploration.

This course examines, through a range of topics and research frameworks, a relationship between language and digital media and the many ways language communication dynamics operates across changing mediascapes. The course provides a solid foundation in relevant theoretical concepts balanced with practical exercises and creative projects. The course adopts a broad interpretation of the term "media" focusing on existing online media platforms as well as on the issues that arise from various uses of digital media for social, political, and cultural purposes, including virtual community building, digital semiotics, memes, viral spreads, surveillance, political opposition and oppression, and propaganda, marginalization and liberation, participatory cultures, production dimensions, etc. The course is designed for graduate and undergraduate students in Russian sociolinguistics, and (second) language studies interested in learning how to research digital media discourse. The course is taught in English; no knowledge of Russian language is required.

This course explores, through a range of topics and theoretical lenses, the relationship between language, identity, and larger social and cultural contexts in Russia, the Post-Soviet geopolitical arena and beyond. We will first examine the ways in which language is used to create personal and group identities and how different cultural, social, and national identities are set off against one another, and against the criteria for inclusion or exclusion within and across national boundaries and various human communities of practice. We will then examine how particular forms of speech, language varieties, and accents are tied to specific traits of speakers and the ways in which the perception of particular people and the way they communicate impacts the projection of social and cultural characteristics. Finally, we will explore the critical dimensions of the language-identity relationship, looking at the function of language to build and divide nations, define peoples, create inequalities, and shape ideologies and local literacy practices in communities, digital spaces, and educational settings. Students will examine various approaches to theorizing identity in sociolinguistics and second language acquisition studies, and will learn to disentangle such constructs as multilingual identity, national\local\ethnic identity, subjectivity, self-concept, mobile identity, digital identity, the self-system, etc.

Diachronic study of the Russian language from Indo-European up to the modern period.

Introduction to theories and issues of syntax, semantics and pragmatics in Russian. Problems in text analysis will also be covered.

Synchronic study of the phonology and morphology of modern Russian.

Investigation of research and ideas on a specialized topic within cognitive psychology, including the psychology of language, visual perception and cognitive memory, decision, and learning. The discussion and exchange of scholarly information in a small group setting, papers and student presentations.

Current theory and data on first language acquisition with special focus on research that relates linguistic theory and learnability theory to empirical studies of children's linguistic abilities. Requirements include a written paper on a subject pertinent to topic area.