By Arden Berry | Staff Writer
Born from a leadership seminar discussion, the department of modern languages and cultures launched its own podcast to reflect the diversity of the world it studies.
Dr. Michael Long, chair of the department and professor of Russian, said many people are not aware of the research his department does or that it does research at all.
To remedy this, Long started “In Other Worlds,” a new monthly podcast that aims to shed light on the department and the value of learning new languages.
“Someone mentioned, ‘Oh, does your department have a YouTube channel?’” Long said. “I never thought about that. And so I started to think about what we might have on a YouTube channel. What would we present? And the idea came to me about doing the video podcasts.”
To raise the department’s visibility, the podcast would highlight faculty research, department programs and student experiences, he said.
“I thought if there [was] a video where you can see people talking and showing objects, it might generate more interest,” Long said.
In the first episode, Long interviewed Dr. Theresa Varney Kennedy, a professor of French and director of women’s and gender studies. Kennedy discussed “Dramatic Proverbs,” a book she and a former Baylor student, Paige Tierney, translated and published. Kennedy said Madame de Maintenon wrote the “Dramatic Proverbs” to teach French female students in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
“I actually went to the Versailles Municipal Library just outside of Paris, and they allowed me to photograph the entire original manuscript of the proverbs so that I could have a working copy,” Kennedy said on the podcast.
Long said the quality of the first episode was high and is excited to see how it will continue to develop.
“I was actually surprised at the quality, because I’ve never done this before,” Long said. “We will be tinkering with it and playing with it, choosing a different set or having some kind of decoration for the camera to shine on … There are lots of different ways we can make it fresh and exciting.”
Despite the allure of a one-man-show, Long does not make the podcast alone. He formed the MLC Media Committee to help edit episodes, create graphics and invite guests. This committee includes Eva Hruska, senior lecturer in Russian; Hajime Kumahata, director of the Interactive Media and Language Center and senior lecturer in Japanese; Dr. Joseph Meyer, manager of creative media for the Experiential Learning Commons; and Dr. Eleonora Boscolo Suteu, lecturer in Italian.
“I do a little bit of editing if he requires me to do so, but I do mostly graphics,” Boscolo Suteu said. “I’m also doing the promotion for social media.”
Long invited Boscolo Suteu to work on the podcast because she had become familiar with the technology after having students in her upper-level Italian class create podcasts in Italian.
“I had recently chatted with an ex-student who was in Italy, and he told me, ‘You know, I love my classes; they were great, but when I went to Italy, I found that I wasn’t able to speak as well as I wanted to,’” Boscolo Suteu said. “And it made me think about our higher-level courses and how we often do practices that involve writing or reading.”
“In Other Worlds” will also go beyond the reading and writing aspects of a language by showcasing the use of languages in research and MLC programs.
“I know a lot of students take a language at Baylor because they have to, and sometimes they just stop there,” Boscolo Suteu said. “Sometimes they realize that learning a language really opens a world for them. So if they are interested in progressing with that language, this podcast will give them a lot of information of what we do within the modern language department.”
To continue to bring visibility to MLC and the importance of learning languages, Long said the department has plans for a magazine and a cookbook.
“Everyone who teaches in this department is either bilingual or multilingual, and we have all experienced and seen the benefits of having a second language and some having a third or a fourth language as well, and we believe that it opens doors for people,” Long said.
