Spanish minor offered at Downtown Phoenix campus

ASU’s School of Letters and Sciences is launching a new Spanish minor downtown that will provide students with linguistic, pragmatic and cultural competencies to interact effectively with U.S. Latino clients in professional settings.

The series of courses in this 18-credit minor will help students hone Spanish communication skills and cultural knowledge to better serve the needs of the U.S. Latino community in various professional settings.

This program is offered only on the ASU Downtown Phoenix campus and will accept its first class of students for the fall 2010 semester.

“This will be a wonderful opportunity for ASU students to enhance their employability by acquiring practical skills they can immediately apply to their work as professionals serving the needs of the Spanish-speaking members of our U.S. Latino community,” said Barbara Lafford, Language and Cultures faculty head in the School of Letters and Sciences.

“This new minor, with its combination of professionally focused courses and practical experience, is the type of innovative initiative that allows ASU to raise its level of social embeddedness, leverage its location in the American Southwest, and transform society – three hallmarks of the New American University.”

This program is focused on professions such as nursing/healthcare, journalism, social work, criminal justice, and education.

Throughout the program students will interact with professionals in the community who serve the needs of the U.S. Latino community. The capstone experience for this program consists of an internship in which students apply the linguistic skills and cultural knowledge from this minor in service to clients in professional settings.

For more information on obtaining this Spanish minor, course content and internships, visit http://sls.asu.edu/lc/spanish/minor.html.

Contact:
Barbara A. Lafford, Barbara.Lafford@asu.edu
Faculty Head, Languages & Cultures
School of Letters & Sciences

Carmen King, Carmen.King@asu.edu
Spanish Lecturer
School of Letters & Sciences