Ten students are studying Persian this fall in a Group Independent Study Project while the University looks for money to fund a permanent program in the Middle Eastern language, which is spoken in Iran.
Last year, a group of students filed a request to start a course in Persian, but the University was unable to secure enough funding to hire a permanent faculty member to teach the language.
"Adding a faculty spot is both a political and an economic decision," said Merle Krueger, associate director of the Center for Language Studies and the faculty sponsor for the GISP.
New positions are typically created only when there is strong and consistent student interest, Krueger said. He said the provost's office searched for a donor to fund the program but was unable to find one.
When that initial plan fell through, the students submitted a proposal for a GISP that was approved by the College Curriculum Council last spring.
Belinda Navi '09, the student coordinator for the GISP, said she helped develop the class' curriculum by researching the curricula of reputable universities that offer Persian language programs. She was directed to a professor at New York University, Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami, who helped her work through the logistics of the course. Khorrami also authored the textbook that is being used in the class.
Pardis Minuchehr, a Persian instructor at the University of Pennsylvania, is serving as the outside evaluator for the GISP. She is in charge of writing the midterm and final examinations for the class. Having an outside evaluator is necessary for the students to receive credit for the course, Kruger said.
Ten of the original 18 students who expressed interest in the course are currently enrolled. "It's the largest language GISP that we've had for a long time," Krueger said.
Of the 10 students enrolled in the course, one is a graduate student from the Department of Egyptology. The others are undergraduates, three of whom are of Persian descent, Navi said -
herself included.
Navi said there was a lot of administrative support from Brown for Persian language instruction. The provost's office is still working to secure a donation to fund Persian courses on a more stable basis. Navi said she is hoping for an intermediate level course by next year.
The future of Persian language instruction at the University depends on whether a donor comes forward with the funds to make Persian a permanent offering, said Assistant Provost Shelley Stephenson. "We happen to have donors who have expressed interest in funding this particular language," she said.
"The GISP this year is really a way for us and for the students involved to demonstrate that there is strong interest in continuing the study of Persian," she added.
