You may have noticed the large beige-colored satellite antenna on top of Olin Hall. Directly below it, room 316, is the Language Learning Center. If you stroll in (and you are most welcome to do just that), you may find the television on and students watching a live French or Japanese news broadcast. Slip on some headphones and listen for yourself. The satellite television, like the other technology in the room, is dedicated to supporting instruction offered by the Department of Foreign Languages.

The Language Learning Center was made possible by a grant from the Culpeper Foundation in 1990. It was decided that the new language center would primarily have a "library function." That is, it was designed for students to use individually or in small groups for work supplementary to classroom activities.

What does the future hold? Many changes. We can expect that the migration from analog tape to digital storage will continue. Already foreign language textbook publishers market materials that include text and other media on disk. That movement will probably accelerate. We can also expect that faculty and students will become increasingly familiar with hypertext as a format for learning and writing. Whitman foreign language faculty and students will be heavy users of the technology showcased in the new Hunter Conservatory.

Whitman College is also participating in a Mellon Foundation-sponsored consortium with Lewis and Clark College, Willamette University and the University of Puget Sound. The objective of the Northwest Language Consortium (NWLC) is to enhance technology and faculty expertise in order to produce original foreign language courseware, either at Whitman or in collaboration with the other consortium schools.

In this, the first year of the grant, Whitman has already received support for two faculty projects. Patrick Henry is working on a multimedia presentation on the Holocaust in France, while Mary Anne O'Neil has been working with Francoise Goeury-Richardson of Willamette University on a survey of the provinces of France that could be used to teach culture in third-year French courses. Other faculty are submitting proposals now for next summer and the next academic year.

The grant also underwrites physical improvements. Four classrooms in Olin Hall will be outfitted with data projection systems and an interface for faculty use of computers and other media tools, such as VCRs and DVD players.

The Mellon grant provides support for summer stipends, travel grants, and annual training programs. Whitman, for example, will host a faculty workshop this spring. In late May, instructors from all four member schools in the Northwest Language Consortium will meet in Walla Walla for several days of exploring web resources that can be used in foreign language instruction.