Pittaya Paladroi’s 2120 Intermediate Thai II class is one of the courses that is included on the Board of Trustees resolution to adopt a plan for monitoring and evaluating academic courses and programs.
Pittaya Paladroi has been teaching Thai to Ohio University students since 2006. The decision came after she moved to Athens from Bangkok, Thailand, in 2004 to attend the graduate program at OU.
"To me, it's a fascinating class, and according to the feedback I get from students, they thought the Thai class is very interesting," Paladroi said.
But Paladroi’s Thai classes might not be offered at the university she came to after leaving Thailand in the future.
Her Intermediate Thai II class is one of the courses included on the OU Board of Trustees resolution to adopt a plan for monitoring and evaluating academic courses and programs.
The Ohio Revised Code stipulates that each state institution of higher education must provide its trustees with a report of all courses and programs based on enrollment and student performance, according to the OU Board of Trustee agenda. That law was enacted in 2015.
Every five years, the evaluation needs to be conducted, and this year, it was completed at OU by Jan. 1, according to the Board of Trustee agenda.
“The Chancellor has defined low enrollment courses as those class sections that fall below 120 percent of the minimum threshold, as defined by the University,” according to the agenda.
In total, 507 classes at OU will be reviewed; •half of those courses were from the Athens campus, according to the agenda.
The university is looking into a handful of options for these classes:
- Designing the course to be shared with other institutions
- Moving to online or hybrid courses in order to increase enrollment
- Removing the course from the curriculum or phasing it out
- Combining class sections or scheduling the class less frequently
- Declining to take any action
Less commonly taught language classes account for about a fifth of the classes under review.
“We talk about global citizens, well if we kill all the foreign language classes, that’s really running the risk,” Jeff Shane, president of the Council on Thai Studies and Southeast Asia reference librarian, said.
After spending time in Thailand as a member of the Peace Corps, Shane said he set up the Thai language program at OU in 1999.
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“A lot of the administrators talk about global issues and making sure that people are aware internationally,” Shane said. “The foreign languages allow us to create that in the students.”
There are currently two students in Paladroi’s intermediate class this semester.
The elementary course, Thai 1120, is not on the list of courses being monitored.
“People who have a foreign language requirement have a two year language requirement,” Shane said.
Kinsey Pritchard, a first year graduate student studying linguistics, took the Thai 2120 while she was pursuing her undergraduate degree in linguistics.
“I really enjoyed the way (Paladroi) incorporates culture into it, particularly stuff with religion and food, because that can be really, really different from the way it is here in the U.S,” Pritchard said.
Originally, Pritchard tried getting her foreign language requirement in German.
“I did not find (German) interesting at all, but I noticed that OU offered Thai, and I thought that would be more interesting and more of a challenge, so I started to take that instead and I really enjoy it,” Pritchard said.
If some of the Thai courses were to be cut, Pritchard said it would be depriving students of a little more diversity.
“If they cut it altogether I would be pretty disappointed with the administration,” Pritchard said. “I don’t think that they advertise these classes nearly enough to warrant this level of concern with the low enrollment.”
When Pritchard took the 2120 course, the course ended with four students in the class, she said.
After she graduates, Pritchard said she plan on applying for a Fulbright scholarship to teach English in Thailand.
@megankhenry
