Summary of Requirements

• Requirements for PhD, all students starting fall semester 2009
• Requirements for PhD (prior to Fall 2009)
• Master of Arts in Spanish (no longer offered - for current students only)

Fellowships and Awards Fellowships

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Washington University awards on a competitive basis a number of multi-year graduate fellowships each year to student applicants with outstanding credentials. Two fellowships held in recent years by students in the Department are the Olin Graduate Fellowship for Women and the Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship for African-Americans.

In addition, graduate students who have demonstrated strong progress in the doctoral dissertation may apply for a final year of funding, without teaching duties, through the Dissertation Fellowship; awards are made by the Graduate School based on departmental recommendations.

In addition, doctoral students working toward Graduate Certificates in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies can apply for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Interdisciplinary Teaching Assistantships.

Click here to access the Graduate Summer Funding form.

Awards

Each year faculty committees nominate outstanding graduate students in Spanish to receive a number of awards to honor their achievements. A candidate may be nominated annually for the Dean of the Graduate School’s Graduate Teaching Award; supporting materials are forwarded to the Graduate School and selected students receive this award during the spring.

Within the Department there are endowed awards to honor graduate student excellence. In Spanish, the Helen Fé Jones Award is awarded annually to a dynamic first-year teaching assistant. This student or is selected on the basis of faculty evaluations of their teaching. The Eva Sichel Memorial Essay Prize was established by one of our own recent Ph.D.s in Spanish, to honor a superlative research paper by a Spanish graduate student each year; a jury of three faculty members judge submissions and nominate the recipient of this award.

Teaching Development Program for Graduate Students

Teaching development for graduate students in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures features a comprehensive and systematic apprenticeship in the theory and practice of teaching Romance languages with ample supervision throughout. The goal of the Teaching Development Program is to prepare excellent teachers for the 21st century. This goal dovetails with the departmental objective of creating excellent scholars and excellent colleagues. The Teaching Development Program includes Master's and Doctoral candidates and is required of all full-time graduate students whose financial support comes from the teaching assistantship.

The Teaching Development Program has 6 phases:

• Teaching Orientation for beginning graduate teaching assistants. This is an intensive one-week program in August prior to the opening of classes.
• Graduate Seminar in Methods of Teaching Romance Languages.
  A required one-semester course that runs concurrently with supervised lower-level language teaching. Seminar topics may include an overview of second language acquisition theories; historical and contemporary teaching methodologies; integration of technology into curriculum; issues in testing and assessment.
• Supervised lower-level language teaching. All first-year teaching assistants serve a teaching apprenticeship as team members of multi-sectioned courses under faculty supervision. This includes observations, consultations, video filming, and written commentary.
• Teaching Practice. Mid-career graduate students have exposure to teaching at several levels, primarily in multi-sectioned courses. At all times, graduate students work under faculty supervision with frequent consultation. They have opportunities to plan curricular units, develop tests, evaluate students, and begin teaching literary texts.
• Annual Instructional Methods Workshop. The language and literature departments offer a workshop for graduate students, often presented by a national figure in language instructional methods . Recent workshops have featured Sally Magnan (University of Wisconsin, Madison); Robert DiDonato (Miami University of Ohio); and Mari Koda and Galil Walker (Ohio State University).
• Advanced Teaching Preparation. The department in collaboration with the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, offers a capstone course, designed exclusively for Ph.D. candidates who have finished all course work. This unique seminar, "Integrating Technology into Language Instruction," provides theoretical and practical training which reflects contemporary efforts to enhance language teaching with technological resources such as CD-ROMS, the Internet, and electronic communication.

Job Preparation

A series of workshops is held every year which cover important job-related issues. Students are all highly encouraged to attend and participate actively in the discussions. Topics covered usually include such matters as academic essay writing and publishing, networking within the profession, the current and future job markets, and conference paper preparation and delivery. (Funding is available to help defray travel expenses of doctoral candidates whose papers have been approved for conferences by two Graduate faculty members and by the conference organizers.) Link to: GRADUATE PROFESSIONAL PAPER POLICY AND DEPARTMENTAL FORM FOR CONFERENCE PARTICIPATION.

In addition, mock interviews are scheduled and may be videotaped ahead of time in the department for those advanced students wishing to attend the MLA annual convention and who may already have job interviews scheduled. Such mock interviews allow students to assess their own interviewing skills and to prepare for productive meetings with prospective employers.

Preparation for the job market also entails a pre-MLA briefing about trends in foreign language instructional methods based on recent research, textbooks, and methodologies. Faculty members assist candidates with preparation of a teaching philosophy statement and portfolio and with preparation for the teaching aspect of on-campus interviews. Finally, when hired, graduate students may receive assistance in the initial development of course materials as a new
faculty member.

For further information about the Teaching Development Program, please contact Joe Barcroft, Associate Professor of Spanish, or Cindy Brantmeier, Associate Professor of Spanish. For more on the Spanish graduate program, contact Professor Akiko Tsuchiya, Director of Graduate Admissions in Spanish. Applications and brochures may be obtained from the Administrative Assistant for the graduate programs, Ms.Helene Abrams.

Return to the Spanish main page.