Providing customized advising and mentoring is integral to the MLL culture. To date, three of our faculty members have won the University’s Meritorious Advising Award, showing dedication to our students’ academic experiences, personal growth, and future career paths. We help students articulate their own personal and professional goals from the time they arrive at Furman. Whether during advising conferences, in class, the MLC or hallway, we are continually working with them to nourish skills and competencies that are valued by employers, as well as graduate and professional schools.
MLL employs a wide range of mentoring tools, resources, and strategies, including coursework, in-house experiences, and international partnerships all around the globe.
In MLL, mentoring and advising is an all-encompassing process. Our students will feel accompanied throughout their learning experience, be it while doing personalized summer research, while working with native speakers in the Modern Language Center, or simply by engaging with the MLL family, inside and outside the classroom.
Professionalization
French, German, and Spanish all have classes centered on equipping students with language and cultural skills for a professional environment. Courses like “French for the Business world”, “German for the Professions,” and “Medical Spanish,” help students develop essential competencies to navigate the workplace in their target languages, both locally and globally. These include, but are not limited to, building resumes, tailoring business letters, and improving communication during professional and medical interviews.
Networking
We continuously facilitate spaces in which students network with and learn from people in their desired field, including alumni and community partners. MLL is proud to maintain a close relationship with our graduates. In 2019, for example, we held our first “Life and Languages” career panel. Each year three alumni (one from each language) joins us to connect and share with students how pursuing an MLL major impacted them personally and professionally. In addition to these events, several other activities promote professional networking, including participating in professional fairs and attending national and international business summits.
International Partnerships and Fellowships
As MLL faculty, we mentor our students to be successful both here in the US and abroad. For that reason, not only do we foster crucial international partnerships to enhance our students’ global experience, but we also work closely with them so they can apply and receive prestigious international and national scholarships. Students in MLL have been awarded, and or have participated, in prestigious partnerships such as the CBYX (Congress-Bundestag for Young Professionals), the Teaching Assistantship Program in France (in partnership with the French Ministry of Education, the Centre international d’études pédagogiques, and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy), the Spanish Cultural Ambassadors Program, and the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant program.