Posted on 02/21/2014 2:47:09 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
UCLA will foot the bill for its employees to learn to speak Spanish under a new program launched this month at the Southern California-based public university.
Employees can take the class during working hours as well as get the cost of the Spanish course – $177 – reimbursed by their department budgets, campus officials told The College Fix.
“It is important as a university and employer that we are on the cutting edge providing our staff with the necessary tools needed to meet the future,” Lee Walton, a UCLA diversity coordinator, said in an email to The College Fix. “The exciting opportunity for a staff employee to learn a language during working hours is priceless.”
The new class, offered by UCLA’s Staff Diversity and Compliance Office, is an expansion of its 10-year-old Spanish as a Second Language program.
“For the past nine years, 124 UCLA staff — from shuttle bus drivers to janitorial supervisors and department managers — have completed the basic ‘Spanish as a Second Language’ course,” UCLA Today stated. “The program began as a pilot project to enhance the cultural awareness of managers, especially those who led ethnically diverse staff members.”
According to campus officials, the program has allowed managers “to speak Spanish with their staff members” and they “have noticed improved morale in the workplace.”
“Managers start to see things differently,” Spanish teacher Susana Zarate told UCLA Today. “As they work hard to learn Spanish, they begin to understand what it’s like for their staff members to learn English.”
Under the program’s expansion, the class will now be open to staff and managers from departments campuswide – not just for “those who led ethnically diverse staff members.”
UCLA has about 21,757 full-time employees, and roughly 26 percent are Latino, according to Walton.
The new class has a capacity of 30, and it meets for 90 minutes on Tuesday and Thursday mornings from Feb. 18 through April 24. It includes basic vocabulary and grammar lessons on how to read and speak Spanish, as well as a cultural component.
One day soon, it will be a requirement to speak and write Spanish if you want to work for government there.
We left in 1974. Thankfully.
Idiotic morons. Anyone interested in being an American and working here should know English. The official language of America.
Catering to illegals and morons speaking the language of the country they ran away from is utter lunacy. Sounds like CA has been taken over by an enemy of America.
It’s only fair, really....I have to put up with their incredibly bad English....they should have to put up with our equally bad Spanish....and Chinese.....
I’m finding it difficult to understand many English speakers. The worst are the fast talking, white, college bound McDonald’s drive through girls who don’t give a damn.
On the other hand, I can clearly understand many foreigners who are struggling with English, if they are respectfully trying to communicate.
Have you been back there?
I was in CA a lot in the 80s and 90s. Had occasion to go there in the 00s.....in LA not too far from the airport, west of downtown.
I felt like I was in a foreign country like back when I spent 7 of my 8 service years overseas in the 60s/70s.
Why not Russian, Farsi, German, Dutch, French, Swahili?
Universities have a fetish about languages. In most of them, you need two languages besides English to get a PhD.
I went through there in 1978 on my way to my first tour in Korea and saw some friends for a few hours. Other than that? Nope.
Ebonics? Klingon? Esperanto?
I have no reason to go back other than a business trip I cannot possibly get out of.
I work at a UC campus and a Mexican lady who spoke little English told me I need to learn Spanish. I reminded her she is in America and in this country we speak English. It was friendly and she agreed.
“10-year-old Spanish as a Second Language program.”
Funny. I thought English is the second language here in L.A.
Most of the professors and students already know Ebonics and Klingon.
?Qué
Our grand kids will be speaking arabic if the donkeys have their way...
And that sort of thing is what keeps me up at night worrying.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.