Spanish@UNE

Australian university students are about to receive Spanish tuition from language staff at Massey.

The University’s School of Linguistics and International Languages has signed a memorandum of understanding to provide a Spanish major to students commencing in 2012 at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, Australia.

Massey Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey, who was present at the Manawatu campus memorandum signing on September 22, is delighted to be in partnership with the University of New England, “This is the beginning of a collaboration that has potential to last for years to come,” Mr Maharey says.

Head of School Professor Cynthia White, and Senior Spanish Lecturer Dr Leonel Alvarado were recently at Armidale finalising the agreement.
“We met with the vice-chancellor and pro vice-chancellor as well as business managers from the UNE and a variety of staff from School of Arts who were all very enthusiastic and excited about this venture,” Professor White says.

The school has been delivering Spanish papers to Auckland University of Technology (AUT) students since last year. “The UNE agreement is very similar to the projects we ran at AUT just on a larger scale,” Dr Alvarado says. “Running the course at AUT enabled us to negotiate any complexities we faced and it also allowed us to foster collaboration between the two universities. The initiative gave us experience in teaching other students in their own time frames, like what we will be doing at UNE.”

There are four 100 and 200-level language papers available in the first year and, from 2013, a similar number of culture-based papers will be available.

Massey University is internationally recognised as a distance education provider and is a founding member of the Australian research consortium, the Distance Education Hub, as is the University of New England.