Bon Voyage to Pablo Viedma!

Pablo Viedma will be on leave beginning June 5, 2017 to work at an international school in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. He will be the technology coordinator and also the soccer assistant coach.

Pablo says: This is a great opportunity to live and work in a very different part of the world, and to learn and enjoy from another culture. Looking forward to new experiences in the three continents I have never visited.

Beginning June 5, Stephanie Treat will serve as the primary Courseshare contact. Please send questions and inquiries about the Courseshare program to elsie@umn.edu.

TandemPlus Spring 2017 Recap

Another semester has come and gone for TandemPlus. Partnered with the TandemPlus Student Association (TPSA) for its second year, Tandem’s Face-to-Face (F2F) program hosted monthly events complete with food, entertainment, and friendship. This semester, we reached 465+ on-campus participants, representing speakers of Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin & Cantonese), English, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Hmong, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese.

The University of Minnesota's Class-to Class Tandem (C2C) program matched nearly 350 UMN students with conversation partners in Spain, Mexico, France, and Germany for telecollaborative, curricular-based language exchanges. Local F2F participants participated in the C2C pairings when course sizes locally and abroad were not identical. This provided F2F participants with more pairing options and helped grow the number of C2C exchanges.

If you’re interested in joining TandemPlus, summer registration will open June 12, 2017! Sign up by registering at tandem.umn.edu. Feel free to send a message to tandem@umn.edu with questions.

LANG Courseshare for Fall 2017 - List Complete

All LANG Courseshare courses planned for Fall 2017 are now open for registration:

• LANG 2011 Accelerated Catalan I
• LANG 3012 Adv Catalan Lang, Soc, Culture
• LANG 1161 Beginning Hungarian I
• LANG 1061 Beginning Persian I
• LANG 2061 Intermediate Persian I
• LANG 1071 Beginning Polish I (partially online)
• LANG 1111 Beginning Turkish I
• LANG 1121 Beginning Vietnamese I - currently full, but the waitlist is open
• LANG 2121 Intermediate Vietnamese I (fully online)
• LANG 3503 Traditional Korean Poetry Sijo

Students and advisors who do not see the language or level they are looking for should email Stephanie Treat at elsie@umn.edu as soon as possible to convey their interest.

Special Thank You to the TandemPlus Student Association Officers of 2016-2017

The TandemPlus Student Association jumped into its second year this last Fall, and it brought with it new student officers: President Ali Megarry, Treasurer Sarah Brown, Secretary Maggie Stone, and Event Coordinator Mark Liu. Their efforts throughout the year were instrumental in assisting the the program, helping it run smoothly during a period of transition. Together the officers took up the tasks of brainstorming, planning, and hosting creatively themed monthly events. Included in these themed events were a TandemPlus Halloween haunted house, cohosted with the International Buddy Program and MISA, a Korean Thanksgiving event, which delivered traditional American Thanksgiving meals as well as traditional foods of Korean Harvest festivals, a buffet-style study event during finals, and a movie night featuring a comedic rendition of the classic Chinese story, A Journey to the West.

In addition to organizing events, the group was responsible for representing TandemPlus as an Affiliate to the Minnesota International Student Association (MISA) at Affiliate meetings and at events. They also applied for and received several grants, which made the monthly events possible.

Beginning Fall semester 2017, TPSA returning members will be joined by new officers: Secretary Minh Tran, Treasurer Chaonan Lin, and Anas Al Badi in the newly developed Social Media Coordinator position. Sarah Brown will return in the position of Vice President, with Maggie Stone as Event Coordinator, and Ali Megarry will retain her position as President.

Language Center Graduate Staff Graduations May 2017

The Language Center has been fortunate to work with two outstanding graduate assistants who are both completing their degrees within days of each other. They brought a collaborative spirit, and a willingness take on new challenges, and unique skills to our department. Please offer your congratulations to the two graduates!

• Shannon Roach, Graduate Assistant Coordinator is graduating with a Master of Arts in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) for Higher Education. She will be teaching in Wuhan, China again this summer, and is very excited to move to Morocco at the beginning of September to teach at the American Language Center in Fez.
• Carter Griffith, PACE Assistant Coordinator, is graduating with a Master of Arts in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) for Higher Education. Carter will continue to to work at the Language Center through the summer analyzing the Spring 2017 PACE data.