What’s “ALC”?
Zoe Shaw (Editor-in-Chief)
If you attended this fall’s open house or saw the pamphlets in the Registrar’s office, you may have noticed a program missing from the roster: C.A.L.L.
Creative Arts, Languages, and Literature was a pre-university program focusing on giving students a better grasp of culture and art history in order to pursue whatever creative art interested them – media, theatre, languages, literature, or all of the above.
Fear not! C.A.L.L. isn’t going anywhere. The program has gone through a few revisions and is now named Arts, Literature, and Communications. I spoke to Tracey McKee, Chair of Media Arts, to learn more about what changes returning C.A.L.L. students can expect when the program begins in fall 2015.
In order to adapt to university skills needed by post-grad C.A.L.L. students, a couple of committees, on which Tracey highlighted foreign languages teacher Michela Belmonte and Dean Tom McKendy, expanded on theatre department’s Jason Howell’s vision of C.A.L.L. to make it even more flexible and accessible.
ALC students won’t have to meet a certain number of either C.A.L.L. elective type. All you have to do is choose six courses, production or cultural studies, from your profile and five more from any profile. Even languages! Now students who aren’t in the language profile can take a language class as an elective. Music classes and new labs on the second floor of Herzberg are also two awesome additions to the program.
So what doesn’t change? Three units of Universe of the Arts are still compulsory, followed by a profile-specific Integrating Seminar. The same post-grad options still apply, such as journalism, broadcasting, visual arts, and more. Tracey also assured me that, like C.A.L.L. is famous for, A.L.C. will remain student-centered.
I only have one semester of C.A.L.L. left, and the students in this program are so happy to be doing what they love in the newfound family that is “CALL” – I mean “ALC”. From what I can tell, the committee in charge of the changes did a fantastic job. Good luck to those who will be in A.L.C. next year, I’m sure you’ll love it!