We invite your participation in the activities of the Department of World Languages and Literatures at Western Michigan University, whether as attendees of department-sponsored events, creators of the events themselves (presentations by alumni and other friends of the department), visitors to campus or financial donors.
Donations
Donate online using a credit card to fund department projects and activities. Your gift to the department can be general or specific:
- Language studies
- The Rodger Swan Memorial Fund for Japanese Studies
- The Kristen Rushlow Living Latin Award Fund
- Transference – Poetry Journal
Student scholarships
Language scholarships
We are working to fund six $3,000 grants, one for each of our language areas.
Study abroad scholarships
Support a student's endeavors to travel the world while exploring their passion.
Student emergency fund
This fund provides immediate help to worthy students who find themselves unable to cover the cost of books and other academic materials.
Academic and community activities
The department supports a variety of activities:
- The department occasionally hosts conferences, including a conference on Arabic linguistics co-sponsored by WMU and the American University of Cairo and the Symposium on Gender Studies Across Languages and Disciplines.
- Our speaker series invites experts in our fields of language, linguistics, translation, teaching, literature and culture to talk with students, faculty and members of the community.
- We support the Southwest Michigan Roundtable on French and Francophone Studies for high school and university teachers in the region.
Visiting professorship
This position rotates among the disciplines and languages in the department. Perhaps the greatest need of our department is to have a larger number of full-time teachers in order to make our programs more stable and assure their continued excellence. Because the popularity of individual languages can change within a single decade, a rotating professorship would enable us to respond to changing student interests and needs in the area of languages and connected disciplines.
Faculty Research Travel Fund
Our faculty members need to attend conferences in order to remain well informed for their students, to pursue research and stay current in the languages and cultures that are our specialties. These conferences are often held out of state or abroad.