Campus correspondent
Last Modified: Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 8:46 p.m.
By fall 2009, University of Florida students will no longer be able to learn the Korean and Vietnamese languages on campus because of the recently announced $47 million budget cut to the university.
Over the last two weeks, UF students, faculty members and staff have signed petitions to President Bernie Machen vehemently opposing the elimination of Korean and Vietnamese language courses. Supporters of the petitions believe that UF's Asian Studies program will lose credibility once these programs are gone.
"No Asian Studies program that lacks instruction in Korean can now be highly regarded," wrote Cynthia Chennault, associate professor of Chinese poetry, in a petition. "As for Vietnamese, the large Vietnamese-American population of Florida adds special reason for the state's flagship university to retain the program."
Joe Glover, interim dean of College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, cut these programs because they do not serve a large portion of UF students and have little connection to students' majors, said Ann Wehmeyer, chair of the department of African and Asian languages and literatures.
In the petition, Chennault wrote that both Korean and Vietnamese courses fill to capacity and provide students with immense educational and professional benefit.
In cutting these language programs, the department will save about $100,000.
Korean lecturer Kyung-Eun Yoon is one of six faculty members from the African and Asian languages and literatures department who will be fired following the 2008-2009 school year because of the budget cuts.
"There is this mindset about minority language programs that administrators do not see any importance in them at all," Yoon said. "In language courses, we are not just lecturing or just delivering knowledge. We try to implement as many cultural aspects as well."
"Joe Glover's decision of cutting these language programs is a calculation, not a consideration of language and cultural instruction," she said.
The Asian-American community at UF is also adversely affected by these budget cuts, Loc Nguyen, president of the Asian American Student Union wrote in an e-mail interview.
The Korean and Vietnamese language courses provide a means for second generation Asian-Americans to understand more about their cultural identity through speech and writing, Nguyen wrote.
Won-ho Park, assistant professor of political science, believes that these budget cuts will do more damage to the university than administrators realize. The impact of cutting language programs ranges from the students in the classroom to UF's relationship with international universities, Park said.
Student interest in language courses creates an academic synergy that transcends into studying other subjects related to that language such as anthropology and politics, he said.
The budget cuts will severely damage UF's reputation concerning hiring future faculty and among academic associations of Asian and Korean studies, Park stressed.
Park added that UF's largest overseas alumni concentration is in Korea and UF has many exchange programs with Korean universities.
"Language precedes everything," he said. "You can't teach humanities, anthropology and politics of a foreign country without the native language. It is like teaching engineers without math."
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