Recruiters to take Spanish class
The admissions staff is learning Spanish to recruit Hispanics in and out of Texas. This summer, recruiters learned basic vocabulary and performed mini-dramas in Spanish.
By Vaune Wilson
Staff Reporter

Admissions department staff plan to enroll in a Spanish class here in September and send six staff members to Guatemala next summer for a language immersion program.

It is part of an effort to recruit predominantly Hispanic areas such as El Paso and Mexico City, admissions counselor Victoria Herrera said. This summer, the department took another Spanish class. Staff went to two sessions, two days a week from June to late August.

“It started out entirely altruistically,” said Ray Brown, dean of admissions. “This was not a solution to an existing problem.”

He said it also facilitates TCU’s mission to be more diverse by attracting students from Spanish-speaking backgrounds.

Initially, only the department travel team was required to take the lessons, Herrara said, but the home team was so interested they were allowed to take it, too.

Currently the admissions staff includes one native Spanish speaker and about four or five with a limited grasp of the language, Brown said.

Lee Daniel, professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies, designed a course that allowed participants to use the basic grammar and vocabulary they learned in interaction with each other. He also explained how to translate Spanish e-mails sent to the office. The staff also role-played.

“I wrote some mini-dramas that had to do specifically with the admissions office,” Daniel said.

While most students who take Spanish classes have had some experience with the language, this group had a wide range of abilities and accommodating all of them was a challenge, Daniel said.

Daniel said although the participants were not graded, they were speaking Spanish better by the end of the course.

“It provided basic groundwork for continued study,” he said.