This fall the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures will be offering two new foreign languages classes. These classes are the first project established by the Iowa Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies Distance Learning Consortium.

Starting in the fall, students may register for beginning Czech and beginning Polish. Both are referenced in the course catalog as Russian 490 with Czech as section two and Polish section three. These classes will be worth four credits each and will be available for two years apiece.

The consortium was established after the state received a $320,000 Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language Program Grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

The two other schools involved are the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa.

The consortium allows these schools to pool their resources together to offer a wider variety of classes to their students.

One of the directors for this project is Madeleine Henry, chair and associate professor of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures.

“For the next three years the Regents universities will send and receive instruction in Polish, Czech and Serbo-Croatian, as well as course work in English relating to different aspects of Russian, East European and Eurasian culture,” Henry said.

Henry said the project is designed to enrich the Slavic Studies at all three campuses.

“It is not designed to replace our current instructional strength in Russian Studies, but rather to complement it,” Henry said.

The two new classes will be taught in Pearson 303 in the new Foreign Language Digital Electronic Classroom. Professor John Thomas, director of the Foreign Language Learning Resource Center, said the classroom is on supposed to be completed and ready for Fall 2002.

“[The courses] will be taught from one of the three campuses involved with eight local students and then broadcast live to the other two schools via Internet video,” Thomas said.

Each location may have up to eight students, and students and teacher will be able to converse and see each other during the class using an advanced technology similar to that of an Internet Web cam, Thomas said.