With Ashland University administrators working to implement a new Global Competency Requirement that will make foreign languages and cultures more accessible to all students on campus, it is important to know how the school’s Foreign Languages department has taken to this new program.

According to Foreign Languages Department Chair Dr. Barbara Schmidt-Rinehart, her department faculty is very excited for what is being commonly referred to as the GPS (Global Passport Strategies) Program, noting that such a program is “long overdue.”

“Our whole perspective is that there should be more students taking foreign languages and there should be more languages for students to take,” Schmidt-Rinehart said.

The GPS Program, to date, will consist of multiple paths of study emphasizing foreign languages, cultural studies and studying abroad in a variety of different ways, according to Frank Pettigrew in an interview with The Collegian back in March.

Whereas all students only had to take an international perspectives course with foreign languages required only for Bachelor of Arts students, Pettigrew said, this program would be required for all AIU students.

Schmidt-Rinehart sees this new potential requirement as a chance to increase students’ knowledge of other languages, thus better preparing them for their future careers.

“We’ve really fallen behind in language instruction,” Schmidt-Rinehart said in reference to recent college graduates in the United States, many of whom have been graduating without significant experience with other languages and cultures.

She feels that with a lack of dedicated global studies at most universities and specifically at AU, most graduates remain monolingual and monocultural. To deprive students of such cultural opportunities would be a disservice, leaving them unprepared for today’s global job market.

This is why Schmidt-Rinehart hopes the GPS Program will open more students up to the wider prospects of the world.

“We hope students are motivated to take languages,” she said in response to students’ initial reluctance towards studying foreign languages.

“They see it as a requirement and then become excited once they’re in the classroom.”

Schmidt-Rinehart said that programs such as AU in Mexico have sparked students’ interest in other languages and cultures.

“It totally changes [students’] lives,” she said. “They see themselves as part of the world.”

Schmidt-Rinehart said that 95% of incoming freshmen at AU were found to have studied a foreign language in high school but less the 20% of them continued these studies here.

The overall goal of the program, Schmidt-Rinehart said, is “to have students communicate and interact beyond areas of linguistic boundaries.”

“I would like every Ashland University student [to graduate] with some contact with people of other cultures, and right now that’s not happening,” she said.

Such an observation is what has helped fuel the creation of the GPS Program, which Schmidt-Rinehart said had begun three years ago and has progressed through the efforts of three faculty committees.

Schmidt-Rinehart said she worked with the second committee to develop the GPS Program after the need for more foreign languages was recognized and that Dr. Jennifer Rathbun, assistant professor of Spanish at AU, has worked with the current committee to figure out how to implement the program.

With the program still requiring faculty senate’s approval at their Dec. 3 meeting, Schmidt-Rinehart said that the work of all involved in its development has been commendable, especially for the “vision and leadership” that Provost Dr. Frank Pettigrew has provided.

“He’s had incredible stamina and leadership to see that this is what Ashland University needs at this point in its history,” she said of Pettigrew’s work with the program.