Culture and Language Across the Curriculum (CLAC): An Effective Approach to Globalizing the Curriculum
[video:https://youtu.be/vpj1frb69LA]
CLAC is a program designed to enrich coursework by affording students the opportunity to study texts and materials in languages other than English, which they typically can’t do in standard content courses due to unavoidable limitations in these settings. The program provides students with opportunities to explore their Asian language interests outside of the language classroom and across a wide-ranging curriculum in humanities, social and environmental sciences, or professional fields such as engineering or business. CLAC effectively allows students to integrate their Asian language skills into their content study in their field of interest, allowing them to enrich their studies of both. As defined by the nationwide CLAC Consortium: "CLAC supports translingual and transcultural competence as a reality for all students, not simply for those who major in a foreign language or participate in immersive study abroad programs. CLAC engages languages and intercultural perspectives to achieve a better and more nuanced understanding of content. It focuses less on bringing disciplinary content or culture into the language classroom than on assimilating languages and cultures into instruction and research across a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts.”
Dr. Zhou is the secretary of the CLAC Consortium and an Internationalization Specialist at Stockton University.