Farewell to our esteemed colleagues!

Thursday May 8 brought many of us together to wish our soon to be retired colleagues well. Six of our number will retire this spring, summer, or have already retired as of December. Carlota Babilon, Chih-Yih Cheng, Leo Paz (Dec), Giorgio Spano, Miguel Vasquez, and Wen Yee Wong (end of July) will be having new experiences next fall. Just think! They will be able to take an August vacation for the first time in many, many years! Be sure to extend your best wishes to these colleagues as you cross paths in the hallway and the copy room during these last two weeks of the semester.

Carlota and Wen Yee attended the Faculty Association celebration on Thursday evening.  Watch the presentation for some highlights!

Retirement Presentation

Krista Hanson at the Commonwealth Club

On Tuesday, February 4, CCSF Russian instructor, Krista Hanson, participated in a panel discussion at the Commonwealth Club of California.The topic was the 2014 Olympic Games (taking place in Russia) and LGBT rights. Here is a link to an article about the event in the Bay Area Reporter and a couple of pictures from the evening: http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=69449

We are proud to have instructors of this caliber at CCSF!

CCSF Language students and instructors protest class cancellations!

Today, between classes,  the halls of the Arts building were filled with the sounds of angry and frustrated students trying to save the classes they need for transfer, for degrees, and for majors. The Foreign Languages Department has been hit hard by the class cancellations that our new administrators believe will make CCSF a better, more "productive" school. That vision does not mesh with the needs of individual students.

Here are some sights and sounds we experienced this morning in front of Arts 208, the office of the Dean of the School of English and Foreign Languages.

Some CCSF Foreign Language Department instructors don't just teach grammar and vocabulary!

Join our own Krista Hanson, Russian instructor (whom we share with SFSU) at the Commonwealth Club of California, Tuesday, Feb. 4 at 6 p.m.  The topic is:

From Russia Without Love: The 2014 Winter Olympics and Human Rights in Russia

Tue, Feb 4 2014 - 6:00pm

• Helen Carroll, Sports Project Director, National Center for Lesbian Rights
• Krista Hanson, Ph.D., Professor of Russian Culture, San Francisco State University
• Julie Dorf, Senior Advisor, Council for Global Equality
• Stuart Plunkett, J.D., Partner, Morrison Foerster - Moderator

Russia, the host country of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, has been drawing criticism from around the world and across diverse communities for enacting a law that bans the distribution of "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations." Since the passage of the anti-gay propaganda law, many have expressed concerns both over the safety of LGBT individuals traveling to the Winter Olympic Games and the International Olympic Committee’s cool response to the issue. Tonight we bring together a panel of leaders and advocates to discuss the implications of this very important issue.
http://www.commonwealthclub.org/node/81978

The Italian Film Festival is back!  Read all about it and see trailers for the films:

http://languagecenterccsf.blogspot.com/

SLO Reporting Day!

The Foreign Languages Department SLO reporters gathered for our Fall, 2013 SLO reporting meeting on the morning of December 17. Last year, our now retired Dept. Chair, Tom Blair, instituted what has now become a twice-a-year tradition that we really look forward to. We've found that, more than just a time to report SLOs, this gathering has become an important part of our assessment process. It gives us an opportunity to get together across our nine language programs, not only to report our SLO assessments, but to  share our assessment techniques and our plans for improvement. Languages represented were Chinese, French, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish.

World Languages Day!

Our first annual World Languages Day took place on November 14, 2013 in the Smith Hall Cafeteria during the lunch hour. Purpose? To celebrate the diversity of languages taught and spoken at CCSF.  What is better than good food and toe-tapping music? Plus, free prizes! And, we had a chance to get together, see our students, meet new students, and get to know a few of our new administrators who dropped by.

The 29th Street Swingtet provided live music in the tradition of Django Reinhardt's  "gypsy jazz", the Culinary program provided international food as part of the lunch service, and the Foreign Languages Department faculty were on hand to inform students about our spring schedule and to facilitate a free raffle for prizes!  Special thanks go to Matt Parkhurst's American Sign Language students for staffing the AMSL table.  Be sure to join us next year!

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