Students can now apply for a new minor degree program in Arabic within the College of Arts and Sciences.

The program is open for all students to apply and it requires six courses. The addition of a minor program is the first step in the Arabic department’s goal of eventually creating an Arabic major.

Students could previously take Arabic courses but could never qualify for a minor or major degree program, which is why the Arabic department decided to take this step, said Gail Bulman, an associate professor and chair of the languages, literatures and linguistics department (LLL).

“Almost 175 students currently take Arabic courses at SU, and several of these students in the past have expressed interest in possibly being able to minor in the language,” she said.

Taylor Bold, a senior economics and policy studies major, said he has been interested in the Middle East and the Arabic language since he was in high school. When he came to SU, he finally had the opportunity to pursue those interests.

However, after taking Arabic classes during his sophomore year, Bold said he realized that all his hard work and commitment to the language would be much more satisfying if he were able to take Arabic as a minor.

When he joined Student Association his sophomore year as academic affairs chair, Bold said one of his main goals was to establish the minor.

Eva Phillips, a part-time instructor in the LLL department, said she strongly believes that the events surrounding Sept. 11, 2001 influenced students’ interests to pursue a degree in the language. The Arabic program was established at SU in 2005.

“I think 9/11 was a wakeup call to the world. People started to realize that they don’t know anything about the Middle Eastern region or its culture,” Phillips said.

Making students more proficient in the Arabic language would also be very beneficial given the prominence of the Middle East today, said Rania Habib, an assistant professor of linguistics.

Phillips and Habib both said that learning a second language, especially Arabic, would open a lot of doors for students in the future and expand their career opportunities.

“If students can put an Arabic minor on their transcripts, it would show employers just how committed they are to learning new things,” Habib said.

Phillips said there are currently 80 students in ARB 101, 28 in ARB 201 and 7 in ARB 301, and added that she was excited about students’ dedication to the language.

“Most students study a second language in high school and once they get to university they forget it,” Phillips said. “But at SU, the students are the ones that are pushing to learn Arabic on their own.”

From a more international standpoint, Habib said that this minor is very important — not only is Arabic the official language of 22 countries, which form the Arab League, but it is also an official language of the entire United Nations. She said knowing the language can help students understand the culture of the Middle East.

Having the minor degree program in place has been a goal of the department since 2005, Phillips said, but the department’s ultimate goal is to create an Arabic major.

“Hopefully once it expands more and we increase our faculty members, the program will keep growing and we will finally achieve our goal,” she said.

Published on August 28, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Zeena: zssaifi@syr.edu