12:00-1:15 pm PDT | 2:00-3:15 pm CDT | 3:00-4:15 pm EDT
Friday, October 10, 2025
About the town hall
Programs in less commonly taught languages are particularly vulnerable in this time of unprecedented uncertainty in U.S. higher education. This grassroots town hall meeting is for faculty, instructional staff, and administrators at Big Ten universities who teach, support, or advocate for programs in less commonly taught and Indigenous languages (LCTLs) to come together to share innovative program models, information about institutional strengths, and interests in forming new inter-institutional partnerships to strengthen LCTL programs. The goal of the meeting is to encourage new forms of collaboration across Big Ten universities to sustain–and even strengthen–LCTL education in very challenging times.
The meeting will include brief presentations about the Big Ten Academic Alliance CourseShare Program and other models for expanding access to LCTLs across institutions. These presentations will be followed by short, informal 3-minute “lightning talks” by faculty and staff at Big Ten universities who will share information about local strengths in LCTLs that might be leveraged in new partnerships with others in the Big Ten, examples of innovative models for expanding access to LCTLs, or exemplary LCTL projects that might be of interest to others. In addition to these presentations, there will be a way for all town hall participants to share information, resources, and contact information with other participants. See here for the full meeting agenda.
Sponsors: University of Wisconsin–Madison Language Institute and Michigan State University Center for Language Teaching Advancement
Contacts
Dianna Murphy, University of Wisconsin–Madison, diannamurphy@wisc.edu
Emily Heidrich Uebel, Michigan State University, heidric6@msu.edu
Felix Kronenberg, Michigan State University, kronenb6@msu.edu
Accommodations: Please contact Jana Martin, jcmartin4@wisc.edu, three business days in advance of the event