10 • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
WEDNESDAY, JULY 16,2003
EDUCATION
Spanish teachers,classes tough to find this fall
By Annie Bernethy
aberneth@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Students looking to take Spanish this fall may find themselves waiting or having to take a different language. The effects of a nationwide shortage of Spanish teachers have found their way to the University of Kansas.
Kathryn Tuttle, Director of Freshman Sophomore Advising, said the lack of qualified Spanish teachers was challenging.
"We're getting students to look at other options," she said.
The alternative options for students are either taking the class in a later semester or taking another language.
Schools within the University are adjusting to a lack of classes.
Linda Davis, associate dean of journalism, said the School of Journalism was relaxing its admission requirements for students applying to the school.
She said she didn't want the fact that students hadn't fulfilled the language requirement to prevent them from being
admitted into the school. Four semesters of foreign language are still a requirement to graduate, Davis said, but it was important that students weren't prevented from taking other needed classes.
Lee Skinner, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese, said she had noticed more students trying to get into her Spanish classes at the beginning of each semester.
It is important for students to continue taking classes like Spanish early in college, rather than forgetting what they learned in high school and taking it later. Davis said.
"I'm afraid for students," she said.
"My sense is that it started about four or five years ago," she said. "The Hispanic population in this country is growing and Spanish is seen as an important language that is useful in jobs."
Skinner said Spanish was a useful language no matter what a person did. Anywhere you go, employers are looking for bilingual employees, she said.
Kim Wilcox, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said the college
"The Hispanic population in this country is growing and Spanish is seen as an important language that is useful in jobs."
Lee Skinner Associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese
was doing the best it could to find qualified Spanish teachers to come to the University.
Student interest in Spanish had grown nationwide over the years, not just at the University, he said.
Vicky Unruh, associate chair of Spanish and Portuguese, said her department sympathized with all the students struggling to get into classes.
She cited a rise in Spanish majors and a decrease in faculty members as the problem.
In the fall of 1998, there were 125 Spanish majors. By the fall of 2002, the number of majors had grown to 329.In addition,
around 15 full-time faculty members worked for the department, but by 2002 that number decreased to almost 11 members.
The Hispanic population in the United States is growing and people are finding that Spanish is an important language to learn, she said.
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 12.5 percent of the population is Hispanic.
Unruh said a ripple effect was taking place throughout the department. The budget crisis coupled with the increase in majors is affecting other areas of the department.
She said the department started placing doctoral students as teachers in higherlevel Spanish classes because of the limited full-time faculty. When those students teach the higher-level classes, entry-level classes struggle to find qualified teachers.
"The administration works with what they have," she said, adding that the department would not compromise its educational standards.
— Edited by Jennifer Wellington
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