Academic Accelerator - Bachelor of Arts - Spanish

Program Description

As a student in the Academic Accelerator, you’ll receive:

• The right amount of support for your academic and English-speaking needs
• A full year’s worth of college credits
• Access to courses exclusively for international students
• English-language help with words you need to know for your classes
• A mix of classes with international and U.S. students

Today, about 350 million people speak Spanish as a native language, making it the world's second most spoken language.  It is the second most common language in the United States with over 34 million individuals whose primary language is Spanish. The US Hispanic population has grown by 60% in just one decade and the buying power of US Hispanics surpassed $926 million by 2007. It has become an essential language in the business, legal, and medical communities, and the demand for bilingual Spanish-English speakers is ever increasing in the global economy.  As a result, Spanish has become the most widely taught non-English language in US primary and secondary schools, as well as in higher education.

Pursuing a Bachelor of Arts with a Major in Spanish, students' language skills—speaking, reading, and writing—are strengthened in order to reach a high intermediate to advanced level of linguistic and cultural competency. Our courses are designed to expose students to the most current and innovative critical, analytical, and theoretical approaches in Hispanic studies today, thereby providing a solid foundation for advanced and postgraduate studies.

The Spanish major provides students interested in careers, such as business, law, criminal justice, industry, social, services, nursing, premed, and other health-related fields, with an edge in their professional training, supporting proficiency in areas such as language skills, analytical ability, and critical thinking. We also have close ties with the Latin American and Latino Studies Program for students interested in interdisciplinary work and the study of Hispanic communities here in the U.S.