Middlebury College will add a 10th language next summer to its well-known summer immersion program: modern Hebrew.
The curriculum for the seven-week course will be designed by faculty from Brandeis University, which is collaborating in the new program. Vardit Ringvald, professor of Hebrew at Brandeis, will direct the program.
The establishment of a School of Hebrew is part of Middlebury’s goal to provide a comprehensive Middle East studies program, college President Ronald Liebowitz said in a news release.
“Just as it would be academically questionable to offer a Latin American studies program by teaching Spanish and not Portuguese, so it would be academically questionable to offer a Middle East studies program by teaching Arabic and not Hebrew.”
Arabic and Portuguese are taught each summer at Middlebury, where students are required to speak and use only the language they are studying during their residence on campus. Students of each language, from beginning to advanced levels, live, eat, and engage in extracurricular activities with the faculty members teaching them.
Portuguese was the last addition to the summer offerings, in 2003. Other languages are Chinese, Japanese and Russian, with a nine-week intensive session; and French, German, Italian and Spanish, over seven weeks.
The summer language schools draw faculty and students from around the world. In 93 years, more than 40,000 students have passed through the programs.
Ringvald and colleagues at Brandeis wrote “Brandeis Modern Hebrew,” a standard college Hebrew textbook. Other Brandeis faculty will join her for the summer residential program at Middlebury. The Brandeis-Middlebury School of Hebrew will debut in the summer of 2008.
