There are many avenues for increased administrative support for Boise State’s diverse student populations. Below, you’ll find a list of options and recommendations for creating departmental programs to assist faculty in their work to become inclusive educators.
Building in Programmatic Support
- Assign a peer advisor or mentor to incoming multilingual students in your department.
These mentors may be people with the same ethnic/cultural/language background or they may be any interested, qualified student who is majoring in that field. The mentor would simply be there to help the student navigate program requirements.
- Link a University Foundations (UF or FD) course to English 101M or a “studio” credit.
Talk to the English Language Support Programs team about co-creating a proposal like this. It would need multiple levels of curriculum review, but it has been shown to be successful in other universities. - Arrange for majors in your department to serve as tutors for nonnative speakers in lower-division classes.
Specialists in second-language learning can provide assistance and training for discipline-specific tutors and interns. - Develop courses with explicit cross-cultural appeal.
Such courses would be intentionally designed to allow students from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, from both the U.S. and abroad, to interact effectively with each other and to examine issues from different cultural perspectives. One example: BIOL 100 could examine fundamental concepts such as energy or water from the perspective of desert communities, urban communities, farming communities, etc. The English Language Support Programs can assist in creating these courses and doing outreach.
Encourage faculty to participate in language diversity workshops or faculty learning communities.
English Language Support Programs offers workshops through the Center for Teaching and Learning. We can also set up a department or college-specific workshop. Additionally, there are many models for increasing faculty awareness of inclusive teaching practices, including:
Fostering an Inclusive Teaching Community
- Reading groups
- Peer teaching observations
- Consultations with Nicole or Gail in English Language Support Programs
Do you have an idea?
Look for Strategic Enrollment and Retention Plan calls for proposals to request funding for department- or program-specific proposals to support multilingual students in the disciplines. One example: Compensation for an English as a second language specialist and a disciplinary content specialist to collaborate on a culturally and linguistically responsive curriculum.
Not sure? Ask us for ideas!
Consult with the English Language Support Programs team to find out how to bring your idea to life.