CSUMB –
A Laboratory for Innovative Ideas

California State University, Monterey Bay is a prime example of a post-Cold-War superpower turning military swords into educational plowshares.

For six decades, the Army base known as Fort Ord was a basic training site, where more than 1.5 million men and women – including Elvis Presley, Jerry Garcia and Clint Eastwood – got their military experience on the base’s 28,000 acres of sandy fields.

With the end of the Cold War, Fort Ord closed and part of the property was used to establish CSU-Monterey Bay, a four-year comprehensive university that would be unlike any other. The fog-shrouded campus, covered with palm, eucalyptus and oak trees, opened its doors to 650 students in the fall of 1995. The campus has grown to 3,800 in fall 2005.

Planners envisioned a new kind of campus with students conversant in two languages, displaying an understanding of other cultures, committed to social justice, eager to embrace the idea of community service; a school that would exemplify the new California – a place where no ethnic group has a majority, where people respect and celebrate all cultures. Much of this work is done in the School of World Languages and Cultures.

The mission of the School of World Languages and Cultures is to prepare students to be active participants in an ever-shrinking and increasingly interdependent globe. WLC prepares students for this global interdependence by developing their literacy in global matters, multi-culturalism and cultural diversity, as well as helping them achieve a formidable level of proficiency in a language other than English.

Students graduating with a major in World Languages and Cultures will reach a high level of proficiency in the language emphasized, as well as acquire a reasonable understanding of various elements (including the arts, literature, history, social interaction, philosophy, etc.), of the primary culture(s) represented by the language which they have chosen to emphasize.

The School of World Languages and Cultures encourages multiple ways of learning about world cultures and/or enhancing language skills. Advocating an interdisciplinary approach, students are encouraged to access the selected culture(s) from multiple disciplines: literature, history, business, art, the social sciences, etc. The approach to teaching and learning language is communicative and outcomes-based, and relies on the use of multimedia technology that allows students to learn and enhance language skills at an accelerated rate.

The languages offered are Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Italian and American Sign Language. French is available online.

For more information on CSUMB, visit the web at csumb.edu  or wlc.csumb.edu

Return To The Language Capital Page

Rev 10/13/05 K. Lemos http://www.monterey.org/langcap/csumb.html