History of the UW-Madison Doctoral Program in Second Language Acquisition

The interdisciplinary doctoral program in second language acquisition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is relatively new, but was long in the making. The University of Wisconsin-Madison has been a leader in foreign language education for a very long time. Professor Constance Knop, who held a joint appointment in the Department of French and Italian in the College of Letters and Science and the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the School of Education, led the way for the establishment of a corps of dedicated foreign language education scholars at Madison.

The excellence of UW-Madison in the area of language studies was emphasized yet again with the decision to name Professor Sally Magnan (French and Italian) the editor of the Modern Language Journal. By the mid-1990s faculty specializing in applied linguistics, second language acquisition and/or foreign language education held tenured or tenure-track appointments in the following departments: African languages and literature, Curriculum and Instruction, East Asian languages and literature, English, French and Italian, German, Slavic languages and literature, Spanish and Portuguese.

These faculty came together in 1995 to establish a doctoral minor program for graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; with the support of affiliated departments (including Curriculum and Instruction, English, foreign languages, as well as educational psychology, sociology, linguistics, psychology and other programs and departments) a minor program was established in 1996 with tracks in pedagogy and research. Students seeking the Ph.D. in any unit on campus could elect to complete their minor in second language acquisition and many did so, especially graduate students in English, French and Italian, German, Slavic, and Spanish. The second language acquisition committee began work in 1997 towards the establishment of the interdisciplinary doctoral program.

The program was approved after a rigorous review process by the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Letters and Science and Graduate School Academic Planning Councils and was ultimately approved by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin in 2002. The 36-credit program includes an introductory sequence, courses in research design and methodology, and courses in one of four possible areas of specialization (second language analysis, second language use, second language processes and learning, and second language pedagogical theory and post-secondary instruction) as well as a four-course minor in an area such as a foreign language literature, bilingualism, varieties of English, etc.

Several internationally known experts in the area of second language acquisition reviewed the proposal to create this new program at UW-Madison. One of them, Claire Kramsch, Professor of German and Foreign Language Acquisition at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote:

A PhD program in SLA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison could fill [the] gap ... for language program coordinators, applied linguists and SLA specialists. .... The proposed curriculum draws on an impressive range of disciplines, mostly from the Areal Linguistics programs in the various foreign language departments but also, as in other programs, from Curriculum and Instruction, Linguistics, Psychology, and Computer Science. Innovative is the contribution from Anthropology, Philosophy, and Communication Arts/Communicative Disorders. ... This breadth of coverage will make this program unique in the country and will make it particularly attractive for students with a Humanities bent, interested in the relationship of language and culture, and language and thought in SLA. [UW-Madison has] all the expertise you need to have a first-rate PhD program.

The first entering class of graduate students in the Ph.D. program was admitted for the fall 2002 semester, and the doctoral program in SLA is now flourishing as students take classes and study for prelims. We, the faculty of the SLA program look forward to reading our students' dissertations and seeing them through to the job market as they proudly bear their degrees from Madison.