NGCSU to train junior Army officers in language, culture

DAHLONEGA - A small group of newly commissioned Army officers will get intensive foreign language training at North Georgia College & State University as part of a Department of Defense initiative.

Various agencies, including the Department of Defense and the House Armed Services Committee, have identified a critical need to have junior officers trained in both foreign language and culture -- especially Arabic, Chinese and Russian. To meet that objective, North Georgia has received a $150,000 grant from the National Security Education Program to pilot a Department of Defense Language Training Center.

Dr. Chris Jespersen, dean of the School of Arts & Letters at North Georgia, said the Language Training Center builds on the foundation of programs already offered for all students through North Georgia's Department of Modern Languages.

The grant will be used to train the new officers, who will be graduates of colleges and universities from across the country, before they receive their initial officer training and deploy to overseas assignments.

"This focuses on commissioned second lieutenants who have time before being stationed overseas to do some intensive language training," Jespersen said, adding that details of the program still are being finalized. "Arabic and Chinese will be part of the program and Russian is a possibility."

All would be taught by native speakers, as is the case with the university's regular programs in those languages, he said.

North Georgia offers minors in all seven foreign languages taught at the university -- Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Korean, Russian and Spanish. The university also offers majors in Chinese, French and Spanish and anticipates approval from the University System of Georgia's Board of Regents for a new major in Arabic this year, Jespersen said.

Foreign languages also are offered in two immersion programs open to all North Georgia students, the Summer Language Institute (SLI) and the Strategic Language Intensive Program (SLIP). This past summer, the university also started an intensive, six-week language program for high school students called the Federal Service Language Academy, offering Arabic, Chinese and Russian.

For the newly commissioned officers, a 12-week program on the university's Dahlonega campus will be followed with eight weeks of studying abroad at one of the many schools with which North Georgia has created an exchange partnership.
"This initiative is a positive outcome that will benefit North Georgia and the training our military officers receive," Jespersen said.

Some three and a half years ago, North Georgia faculty and administrators proposed to members of the House Armed Services Committee that the university could supplement the language instruction being provided by the U.S. Army's Defense Language Institute. With support from Georgia's Congressional delegation, the concept was authorized in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2010.