Students point toward that goal and receive momentum from it. It also promotes further study after a student's return from abroad. Almost all our five to eight students a year who participate in the CIEE Leningrad University program have gone on to take further courses in Russian. At Carleton the number of students who participate each year in foreign programs has been growing steadily. Clearly, our students do not mind leaving us for extended periods.
Many extracurricular activities increase the importance of languages on campus.
At Carleton we have language houses with foreign-national head residents, language clubs, an annual international film festival, a speaker series on literature and area studies, and occasionally a foreign language play. These activities all help to keep languages alive after the requirement is fulfilled, but the real test of the role language plays is the curriculum itself. The area studies programs are obviously important. These programs have served an extremely valuable role in bringing disciplines together in a common enterprise. An answer to this criticism can be found in the concept of a concentration, probably a familiar institution at many schools but only recently adopted at Carleton.