Budget shortfall

Once again we are predicting that we will not meet the net revenue goal we need to reduce our deficit by the budgeted amount, but we need to make some progress on reducing the deficit below last year’s level ($2.3million.) This means that more cuts will need to be made in FY19 spending. We will take a targeted approach rather than pursuing cuts across the board. Individual budget administrators (and managers in Middlebury, where appropriate) have been informed if cuts are requested from their areas.

Institute Board of Overseers

The Institute Board of Overseers will meet in Monterey on November 16 and 17. The Board has suggested aspects of the Institute that they would like to learn more about, particularly a deeper understanding of the student experience, as well as a look at new opportunities for MIIS (e.g. online programs, professional programs). Accordingly, we will be calling on a number of faculty, staff and students to help showcase our distinctive programming.

The Role of Languages at MIIS

The ILG and Council have committed themselves to review the role of languages at MIIS, with a focus on the outcomes our students need for their careers, and on making our core degree programs financially sustainable even as we make them more academically distinctive.  In this first conversation, we started from the premise that no decisions would be made at this meeting. Discussion focused on (1) what students and prospective students want and need from our curriculum and pedagogy, and on (2) developing a set of design principles for a flexible and student-centered policy. We agreed that we would seek further stakeholder engagement before any decisions are made by the Institute Council. Some highlights from the discussion follow:

There are three student populations we are trying to serve:

• High-level language learners who have a level of proficiency that allows them to participate in rigorous content-based courses in their language (and, often, to work professionally in a second language after graduation). These students are enthusiastic language learners for whom our commitment to languages was a decisive factor in their decision to attend. We want to continue to serve them well, and in fact better.
• Students with proficiency lower than the 200 hundred level, some of whom are interested in learning a language, and some of whom are neutral or “captive” learners. Some of these students struggle to meet our current requirement, with attendant administrative burdens for some faculty and staff.
• Students who don’t choose MIIS (or don’t apply at all) because they are uninterested in or discouraged by the language requirement.

The discussion of student needs included threads about the role of language in career success; language as a gateway to cultural sensitivity, and the overlap between languages and intercultural competence; language study as a proxy for the capacity to do intellectually rigorous and challenging work; relationship between language and the decolonization of the curriculum.

Emerging design principles (to be tested by further stakeholder engagement):

• • Language education is a core part of our tradition, our identity and our future. We are not considering any proposal that would change that. Indeed, we want to update and deepen our commitment to this principle in a way that is responsive to changed global and market circumstances, and which contributes to our academic distinctiveness and financial viability.
  • Degree programs determine the language curriculum of their students. This is in part meant to ensure student-centric degree maps: what students, employers and the wider world want and need.
  • Whatever changes are adopted, students must retain the ability to choose language study within their program without additional cost.
  • Degree program autonomy is constrained by some kind of Institute-wide policy parameters. Some examples of that this might look like:
    • 12 or 8 credits (proportional to program length) that might be allocated among LS and ICC according to degree programs’ judgement.
    • Two tracks within all or most degree programs: one that requires language study and a second that includes a language awareness and/or ICC component.
    • Consideration of new modalities of language learning (more 2-credit content specific courses, language coaches, credit-bearing 100-level courses)
  • The parameters we choose must be able to be implemented within current budgetary constraints.

Next steps

• • Stakeholder engagement (by the end of November)
  • Draft institutional parameters (by end of semester)