Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum (CLAC)

Wesleyan University’s CLAC program is administered out of the Fries Center for Global Studies, and aims to provide students and faculty across the campus with opportunities to deepen their engagement with their subjects through the use and further development of their language and intercultural skills. CLAC courses at Wesleyan can be linked to an English-medium course or standalone, and students can earn either 0.25 or 0.5 credits depending on the nature of in-class work and of out-of-class preparation and assignments; the former are CLAC.25 and the latter are CLAC.50. Wesleyan’s CLAC program began in January of 2019 and to-date, courses have been offered in Ancient Greek, Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), German, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Russian, and Spanish.

Both CLAC.25 and CLAC.50 courses meet once/week (for 50 or 80 minutes, respectively) and are graded Cr/U. There are many successful models for CLAC courses. They may be taught by the same instructor as the “parent” class (if any), or by another instructor; students may include native speakers of the target language, advanced (or intermediate-level) learners, or both; and so on. CLAC.50 courses typically are primarily conducted in a language other than English and require significant outside-of-class work (a minimum of 40 hours over the semester). CLAC.25 courses, in contrast, may aim at a wider range of linguistic abilities, exposing even students with more rudimentary language background to aspects of the course content that are only accessible by incorporating non-English materials. CLAC.25 courses require a minimum of 17 hours of work outside the classroom.

All CLAC courses are compensated at either 50% (for CLAC.50) or 25% (for CLAC.25) of the standard overload rate for the faculty member offering the courses; for a CLAC.50, this means a range from $3000 for an Assistant-level faculty member up to $4000 for a tenured full professor. CLAC courses can run with fewer than 5 students (at the instructor’s option), though the compensation is pro-rated down. CLAC courses that fail to enroll at least two students will be cancelled.

CLAC section instructors should have strong language skills in the target language, but need not be native speakers nor trained language instructors. It may be useful for instructors to consult with trained language teachers, which the FCGS can facilitate, but CLAC sections are typically not focused on language instruction. 

More information is available via the links at the right, as well as via the CLAC Initiative Moodle, which contains syllabi, videos, and discussion of various issues. Any faculty member may be added to the Moodle simply by contacting Steve Angle, FCGS Director (sangle@wesleyan.edu), who will also be happy to answer any questions about the program.