The Establishment of Vietnamese Language Courses at USC

Dear Dean Howard Gillman,

We are writing to you today to request the addition of a series of Vietnamese language courses to the East Asian Languages and Culture department. We are a group of undergraduate students, graduate students, and student organizations who would like to express our dissatisfaction with the very limited amount of language course choices offered in the East Asian Languages and Culture department, especially when considering the recognition the University of Southern California bears to the global community. With 111 different countries represented in our student body, Vietnam welcomes a remarkable 64 students to the campus. With the addition of domestic students of Vietnamese descent, this number is enough to create a need to offer Vietnamese language courses in order to increase diversity and tolerance on campus.

In 1880, the now named Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences opened its doors at the University of Southern California. Since then, the East Asian Languages and Culture department was established and has grown to offer language courses in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. While the Vietnamese population has come to this university for decades now, there yet remains to be any language courses offered at USC. Language courses offered in Vietnamese will not only enhance Vietnamese Trojans' understanding of their heritage but will also open up the Vietnamese culture to the rest of the students in order to bring a more prominent awareness of the rising Vietnamese population in Los Angeles and the surrounding community. Vietnamese courses will enable Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese students to join in on a pursuit of understanding this rich culture.

When one understands the culture, he understands the motivations and goals of that society. As such, courses in the Vietnamese language will allow an individual to cultivate his academic experiences, whether or not it is through further education in the language. Even without an extended language goal, the addition of these courses will broaden the scope of a students education and will thus promote more student research and production.

Academic research and production through the offering of Vietnamese language classes goes alongside with the University of Southern Californias role and mission. Foremost, introduction of an additional Asian language will cultivate the mind and spirit, allowing students to pursue an interest they may have never known existed and open up their minds. Secondly, while courses in the Vietnamese language may be liberal studies, they may also lead to professional development in the further pursuit of wisdom. These courses will open up new doors for students who may want to continue their research with the history and culture of Vietnam. As USC is a pluralistic university, it is fitting that the College would desire to enhance as many aspects of its student population as possible, and one way of doing so would be to open up the Vietnamese language to its 37,000 students.

We hereby request there to be a sequence of language courses in Vietnamese.