I apologize in advance for the long post, but I will have a lot to talk about in relation to the future of the program on this blog, and in order to provide the background context I thought I’d make a long introductory post about the general structure of the program here and what that structure means for our options over the next few years...
The Department of Modern Languages and Literatures hires four different types of faculty. First, tenure-track faculty are full-time (meaning 3 courses per semester) and their contracts continue indefinitely (provided they are granted tenure when they come up for review). Visiting faculty are full time, but they have only a one-year contract which can be renewed for no more than three years, after which it is expected that they will seek employment elsewhere. Affiliate faculty are hired with various lengths of contract, and they can continue to renew indefinitely, though they typically teach only language classes. And adjunct faculty are hired to teach one or two courses depending on need. Depending on the needs of the individual languages, a combination of faculty are hired, with tenure-track typically teaching literature and upper-level language, full-time non-tenure track faculty teaching the range of regularly offered (mostly language) courses, and adjuncts hired to fill in the gaps. Unlike most large schools, where teaching assistants frequently do a large amount of the lower-level language teaching, GVSU does not make use of teaching assistants. That means there is generally a higher bar set for when we can add courses, since a faculty member always has to be found – or hired – to teach them.
From 2002-2008, the Japanese program has relied on one visiting faculty member (two different people doing a three-year-stint each) and an adjunct. Last year, for example, the visiting faculty member was Tomomi Emoto, who was finishing up her third and final year at GVSU while she was completing her PhD in anthropology, and the adjunct was Kailing Wu, handling two sections per semester. Like this year, there were three sections of first-year in both the fall and winter semesters, and there were two sections of second-year in the first semester, dropping to one section in the winter (as is usual after the three-semester language requirement is fulfilled). So the schedule looked something like this:
Fall 2007 Winter 2008 JPN 101.01
JPN 101.02
JPN 101.03 JPN 102.01
JPN 102.02
JPN102.03Wu
Wu
EmotoJPN 201.01
JPN 201.02 JPN 202.01
JPN 380 Emoto
Emoto
As a full-time faculty member, Emoto sensei was responsible for three course sections per semester, so in the winter, when there was only one section of second-year Japanese language to teach, she had room in her schedule to teach a course of her choosing. JPN 380 is called “Special Topics in Japanese” and it’s a “catch-all” course number, in the catalog as a place holder under which a wide variety of courses can be taught, depending on the professor’s area of expertise. Emoto sensei, for example, taught a course on Japanese culture through film. And it’s fairly clear from the numbers why the Japanese language program has been stalled at second-year for so long. In order to add a third-year course, two full-time positions were needed, and without even a commitment to make the first full-time position tenure-track, that wasn’t going to happen.
Last year with Emoto sensei’s third year coming to an end, the MLL Department once again went to the college (CLAS – the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences) with a request for a tenure-track position. And once again – though I have yet to figure out exactly why, given the high enrollments – there was some resistance. In order to get the position, MLL had to get support from a second college (COIS – the College of Interdisciplinary Studies). COIS includes the East Asian Studies program (which ostensibly includes both Chinese and Japanese), so it was a natural fit with the position. And, although it had never been done before so the details of how the position would actually function weren’t entirely clear, a tenure track line was granted in MLL for Japanese, funded 2/3 by CLAS and 1/3 by COIS. And that is the position for which I was hired.
It was expected that the 2008-2009 academic year for Japanese would look pretty much like the schedule above for last year, with me teaching the classes formerly taught by Emoto sensei, and Wu sensei sticking with her same courses. However, we learned late in the summer that Wu sensei would not be returning to Grand Valley, instead focusing her energies on teaching Chinese in the Grand Rapids Catholic schools. This left us in a bit of lurch... especially since it isn’t as easy to find Japanese-speakers qualified to teach at the college level in the Grand Rapids area as it is to find, say, Spanish adjuncts. In fact, we still hadn’t found someone to teach the additional sections by the beginning of August, and we were starting to worry that we may have to cancel some sections (something I really didn’t want to do in my first semester trying to build the program). We finally found Keiko Sakakibara, who had taught Japanese at Forest Hills high school in the past, and she took on the section of JPN 101 taught on the Pew campus while I took on an additional section of JPN 101 as an overload for the fall semester. So here’s how the current schedule looks:
| Fall 2008 | Winter 2009 | |
| JPN 101.01 JPN 101.02 JPN 101.03 | JPN 102.01 JPN 102.02 JPN102.03 | Robinson Sakakibara Robinson |
| JPN 201.01 JPN 201.02 | JPN 202.01 | Robinson Robinson |
The fact that second-year Japanese drops to a single section in the winter term means I don’t have to take an overload in the winter semester, but unfortunately it doesn’t leave space for a Japanese literature/culture course either.
So where does that leave us for next year? Well, MLL has recognized the need for a second full-time instructor, and it is a lot easier to get approval for a visiting position than it is for a new tenure-track line so we’ll be running a search in the winter for another full-time instructor. It will be a visiting position, which means that the person will be able to stay here up to, but no more than, three years. That additional position means that I will be able to leave all three first-year sections to the visitor and start to expand our Japanese offerings, including a third year of language and a literature/culture/civilization course in the 2009-2010 academic year. It isn’t finalized yet, but it should look something like this:
| Fall 2009 | Winter 2010 | |
| JPN 101.01 JPN 101.02 JPN 101.03 | JPN 102.01 JPN 102.02 JPN102.03 | Visitor Visitor Visitor |
| JPN 201.01 JPN 201.02 | JPN 202.01 | Robinson Robinson |
| JPN 380(language) | JPN 380(language) | Robinson |
| JPN 380 (culture) | Robinson |
“Wait a minute!” you ask, “I thought you were going to teach third-year Japanese! What’s with all those JPN 380’s?” Well, as I mentioned earlier, it’s hard to get new courses into the catalog without a “pilot course,” but JPN 380 can be taught with a wide range of contents, including language, and students can take the JPN 380 courses for credit multiple times as long as the content changes. So for the first year, we’ll be teaching the equivalent of a JPN 301-302 sequence under the course number JPN 380, and if enrollments are decent we should be able to officially add JPN 301-302 to the books the following year. The other JPN 380 course will also be a pilot course, but this time for a permanent literature/culture/civ course. I have had quite a few requests from those of you who have seen my website and list of my past courses and want me to re-teach those, but unfortunately I probably won’t have the freedom to do so anytime soon. My first priority is to build courses which can help to fulfill the basic requirements of the EAS minor, in order to create options for a minor in Japanese studies as soon as possible. Toward that end, I will probably end up adopting the current model used by the Chinese program, which has a two-course sequence on “Ancient Chinese Culture” (CHI 321) and “Classical Chinese Culture” (CHI 322). In the Japanese case, I might teach “Pre-modern” and “Early modern” as opposed to “Ancient” and “Classical,” but it would probably be similar in that it would teach a wide range of culture (literature, history, art, religion, etc.) for a particular time frame (Pre-modern to 1600 AD, Early modern from 1600-1900). Unfortunately, more specialized courses will probably have to wait until the basics are established (and we are able to hire more people).
Okay, so let’s assume that all goes well, and we are able to put the third-year language course and the civilization course on the books for the 2010-2011 academic year. It would look something like this:
| Fall 2009 | Winter 2010 | |
| JPN 101.01 JPN 101.02 JPN 101.03 | JPN 102.01 JPN 102.02 JPN102.03 | Visitor Visitor Visitor |
| JPN 201.01 JPN 201.02 | JPN 202.01 | Robinson Robinson |
| JPN 301 | JPN 302 | Robinson |
| JPN 321 (or 322) | Robinson |
It looks neat and tidy (and quite a bit better than what we have right now) but even with two full-time faculty we are only just barely covering the courses. For one thing, the culture courses could only be taught in the winter semester, so we could only offer them once per year, alternating between the two courses (not exactly the way to guarantee that students who want to pursue the minor will be able to do so). But more importantly, it leaves no room to expand. If first-year enrollments increase, or if more students want to continue on to the third semester of Japanese, or if there is enough interest to warrant a fourth year of language, there is no room to grow. I have talked with the head of MLL, and she envisions being able to make the case for a second tenure-track position by about the time that the visitor’s third year rolls around. And hopefully that means we would be able to get yet another visitor in to help cover more classes as we expand. With three full-time faculty, here’s what I’d like the regular schedule to look like within five years:
| Fall | Winter | |
JPN 101.01 JPN 101.02 JPN 101.03 JPN 102 | JPN 101 JPN 102.01 JPN 102.02 JPN102.03 | First-year language |
JPN 201.01 JPN 201.02 | JPN 201 JPN 202.01 JPN 202.02 | Second-year language |
| JPN 301 | JPN 302 | Third-year language |
| JPN 321 JPN 323 | JPN 322 | 3-semester culture sequence (pre-, early, modern) |
Now if I really had my wish list fulfilled, there would also be a fourth year of language study, perhaps a classical Japanese language course, and several more courses on specific topics (like most of those on my previous courses list), but those will probably have to wait. I think the above is the bare minimum to sustain Japanese as a viable minor through EAS. It allows for the first three semesters to be taken in either the fall or winter semester, which is important to accommodate different student needs as enrollment grows, and it makes each of the three culture courses available every year rather than every two. If we could have a reliable slate of courses to allow the EAS minor in Japanese by the end of those five years, we would be in good position to start thinking about a major.
Unfortunately, the real challenge to making Japanese a bigger part of the EAS program is something over which I have almost no control: the almost complete lack of faculty elsewhere on campus who teach Japan-oriented courses. China is very well represented, with China specialists in history, religion, sociology, geography, etc. but the only other Japanese scholar on campus is Joe Helgert in Communications, and he rarely (if ever) teaches Japan-oriented courses. Japan is a minor aspect of some courses, but even those EAS courses that are supposed to have a Japanese element are usually strongly China-centric, if only because those who teach it are far more familiar with the Chinese tradition than the Japanese. One thing I cannot do is create a Japanese major entirely out of the MLL department... I would need extremely large enrollment numbers to justify the necessary faculty. And I have very little control over what other departments prioritize as they hire new faculty. As a lone Japanese voice in the Chinese sea that is EAS, I hope to keep Japan on their radar as they make these decisions, but it is extremely difficult.
Anyway, that is where we stand right now. I apologize for the even-longer-than-I-thought-it-was-going-to-be post, but hopefully as things develop I’ll be able to point people here for answers rather than going over the same ground over and over again. As always, feel free to ask me to explain anything further in the comments, and your feedback is alway’s appreciated. Kore kara mo yoroshiku!
