International students test Miami’s new immersion program
Xiang Huang, left, works with Composition/Rhetoric Ph.D. student Bre Garrett.
Below are three final exam questions from a single class:
- What kinds of test-marketing should be conducted before launching a new food product overseas?
- Why can the min-max computer algorithm be used in the creation of deterministic computer games like chess or tic-tac-toe, but not for stochastic games like poker or backgammon?
- Is it possible to be a person without being a “he” or a “she”? What does it mean to call someone an “it”?
What class was it? Marketing? Computer Science? Women’s Studies?
The correct answer is English 106, Experience in American Language and Culture, the department’s new course for incoming international students.
M.A. poetry student Jade Hudson, left, works with Han Zhu, Mengxing Xu, and Yilun Zhang.
The questions were drawn from the classroom presentations of 10 faculty guest speakers, representing the five Miami University academic divisions: the College of Arts and Science, the Farmer School of Business, the School of Fine Arts, the School of Education and Allied Professions, and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. All the guest lecturers are honored teachers, recipients of divisional and all-university teaching awards, and they represented disciplines ranging from engineering to psychology to teacher education.
Together they made English 106 the most interdisciplinary course ever taught at Miami.
M.A. poetry student Stephanie Elstro works with Ruijie Dou.
English 106 is the academic component of Miami’s new Academic Preparation and Culture Program (APCP) program, offered for the first time in summer 2008. Newly admitted international students from China, Nepal, Scotland, and other nations came to campus three weeks before the start of fall semester to take part in the voluntary program.
APCP program planners anticipated that possibly 12 to 15 students would choose to come early to test Miami’s academic waters. Student interest, however, far exceeded their prediction, with 65 students enrolling in APCP and English 106 in August 2008. Based on this year’s demand, expectations are that more than 100 new international students will participate next year.
This academic and cultural “warm-up” program is believed to be unprecedented among U.S. colleges.
APCP is sponsored jointly by the Department of English, the Office of the Provost, and International Education. The director of the program and lead teacher of English 106 was Felice Marcus, coordinator of China Business Programs and an ESL specialist.
As a demonstration of the relevance of English 106, try answering the following final exam essay question from Ted Wagenaar’s lecture (Sociology), on the diversifying US population:
“Why is it noteworthy that for the first time ever, two of the top 10 last names in the U.S. are the Latino names Rodriguez and Garcia, and that Young and Lee, common Asian surnames, are in the top 25?”
If you answered that minorities make up a greater percentage of the U.S. population than ever before, and that the English Department is a leader in creating a more welcoming community for students of all backgrounds, you would be on the right track.