ADVISORY BOARD OF THE SUBJECT CENTRE FOR LANGUAGES, LINGUISTICS AND AREA STUDIES

MEETING ON 1 JUNE 2001 IN CILT, LONDON

Present

Professor Richard Towell (Chair)	Prof Judith Bryce	
Alison Dickens	Dawn Ebbrell	
Prof Dick Ellis	Ms Hilary Footitt	
Prof Marianne Howarth	Prof Michael Kelly	
Prof Ralph Penny	Dr Paul Rowlett	
Prof Anne Stevens	Janet Bartle	
George Blue	Prof Rhys Williams	
Derek Winslow	Vicky Wright	
Prof A O Corrain	Dr Roel Vismans	
Elizabeth Ashurst (Secretary)		

1.	Apologies for absence
Apologies were received from 

Dr Keith Brown	Dr Pandeli Glavanis	
Elspeth Jones	Dr Lid King	
Ray Land	Prof Rosalind Marsh	
Prof Ulrike Meinhof	Ray Satchell	
Prof David Walker	Ron White	
Prof David Bickerton	Dr Neil Wynn	
Prof Yasir Sulieman		

The Chair hoped that all the Specialist Group Chairs would be able to attend the next meeting.  

The Chair informed the Board of the sudden death of Margaret Tumber who had represented the ALL.  The condolences of the Board would be expressed to her family.

2.	Minutes of the last meeting and matters arising
FE Sector
The proposal to broaden the Subject Centres’ remit to include the FE sector had been postponed.  Negotiations were taking place between the LTSN and the Learning Skills Council.

Mapping the membership of the Advisory Board
This had not been done yet.  It was requested that this be done in time for the next meeting.

Links with Subject Associations
Members of the board reported on where the Subject Centre had been raised at association meetings.  This had occurred at meetings of 
Association for French Language Studies  (AFLS)
Society of Italian Studies
Committee of University Teachers of German (CUTG)
HOGMEET (Meeting of the Heads of German) 
Standing Committee of Heads of European Studies (SCHES)
University Council of Modern Languages (UCML)
British Association of American Studies (BAAS)
Association for Low Countries Studies

Links with the Subject Centre would also be raised at the forthcoming meeting of Coordinating Council for Area Studies Associations (CCASA) and at the next meeting of the Association of Hispanists.

It was reported that items of Subject Centre news were sent out on the BAAS mailbase

Links with Subject Associations would be a recurring Agenda item on the Advisory Board minutes.  It would be important to see if the Subject Centre was reaching a wider audience.

Identifying Funding Sources
It would be important for the Subject Centre to bid for extra funding to support its activity.  Mike Kelly noted that there was probably potential for bidding for EU funding under the 6th Framework

Refereed Journal
Richard Towell had circulated a paper in November on Journals and Research.  The need for research training was recognised by the Board.  Mike Kelly reported that the Directors of Subject Centres in the Arts and Humanities group were discussing how this need could be addressed by Subject Centres.

Meeting the needs of colleagues in literature and cultural studies
Dick Ellis reported that the Area Studies Specialist Group had considered way of serving the literature and cultural studies community.  Workshops in partnership with the English Subject Centre were being planned.  The establishment of Special Interest Groups including one for Literature studies was also being considered.

Concern was expressed that the Subject Centre should endeavour not to reinforce any barriers which may exist between language and literature specialists.  Any links and joint activities between language and literature or between cognate subject centres were to be welcomed.  The remit of the Languages benchmarking group was languages and related studies – the benchmarking group had encouraged sharing with other disciplines.

3.	Evaluation 
Subject Centre Review of the year 
It was noted that Alison Dickens of the Subject Centre was a member of the Steering Group for two FDTL projects (Americanisation and Linguistics 2).

Bids for LTSN funding
The Academic Coordinators reported that bids had been placed with the LTSN for two projects, one for developing online resources, the other for developing a web based encyclopedia of good practice.  It was agreed that the bids could be circulated to the Advisory Board though they would not be placed on the web until confirmation of receipt of funding had been received.  

The Online Resources Project includes time and money to map the sector in more detail.  It was agreed that, although the languages community may have suffered from questionnaire fatigue during the term of the FDTL projects, it may be ready now for a survey of needs since minds were focussed after the benchmarking exercise and with the new round of QAA review about to begin.

Institutional visits
It was noted in the review document that plans had begun for instututional visits next academic year.  Mike Kelly reported that there was some pressure from the LTSN to provide more focussed activity and that the institutional visits had been a valued and valuable part of the work of the CTI.  

Members of the board felt that regional visits rather than institutional visits had much to commend them: they would enable the Subject Centre to reach a wider audience and would encourage neighbouring institutions to collaborate.  The Northern Ireland Roadshow in January had provided an invaluable opportunity for colleagues at Queens and Ulster to meet.

It was also noted that there would be occasions where an institutional visit would be more valuable if, for example, the visit was to demonstrate software specific to the needs of one institution

Partnership with UCML
Hilary Footit reported on the bid to HEFCE to support a Collaboration Programme.  This would include collaboration in teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate level, collaboration in producing teaching resources and in producing support resources.  It is hoped that UCML would know the outcome of the bid by the time of the UCML Plenary on 9 July.

A project to produce an online resources bank to establish languages as a key graduate skill had been proposed by the Subject Centre and UCML.  HEFCE had agreed to fund preliminary work, and had the support of the French and German embassies in particular.  Price Waterhouse Coopers were currently developing a business model.  Martin Harris, Vice-Chancellor of Manchester University, was chairing the E Languages Steering Group.

UCML were also proposing a project to address HEFCE’s widening participation agenda which was being led by the DfEE.  It proposes to seek funding for local language network coordinators to liaise with HEIs, schools and FE language providers to agree support programmes and establish networks.

MHK noted that the close cooperation between UCML and the Subject Centre had been crucial in the Subject Centre’s development and in taking forward important initiatives and he would welcome similar productive partnerships with other Subject Associations.

Policy formation
The Nuffield Languages Programme had been established to press for the implementation of the recommendations of the Nuffield Inquiry.  It would be funded at the same level as the Inquiry and commission policy related research.

The DfEE had established a Steering Group chaired by Jackie Smith in response to the Inquiry.  This included a balanced membership of academic and business interests.  However the DfEE needed to see that Higher Education needed more involvement in addressing the issues raised by the Inquiry.

MHK reported that there had been a very recent call from HEFCE for bids to its Innovations fund for projects which involved collaboration with business and the HE community.

It was noted that lifelong learning was an important issue which might be addressed by regional collaborative partnerships involving all sectors of education.  The Regional Language Centre in the North West was a model which could be adopted elsewhere.

2002 conference
Two meetings had taken place the previous day.  The title would be ‘Setting the Agenda – Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies in Higher Education’ .  Themes would include: innovation and collaboration, open learning, supporting learning, restructuring.  A call for papers would be drafted shortly and sent out at the end of the month.  The event would be publicised in the summer.  The venue had not yet been finalised.

It was suggested that Jonathan Breckon at the British Academy might be contacted to see if the British Academy wish to be involved.

Richard Towell commended the Subject Centre for the range and number of activities which it had carried out this year. 

Janet Hooper’s evaluation document
The document was commended as being well structured and written.  The Chair recorded his thanks to Janet Hooper for the document.

The questions on page 15 were considered.  Although some departments may seem to be less interested in Teaching and Learning issues than in research, it would be important to continue to try to engage with such departments.  External timetables should not be ignored: the first year of Subject Centre activity coincided with the December deadline for the RAE.  The current interest in benchmarking would, it is hoped, regenerate interest.  Monthly email bulletins with links to parts of the website were welcomed.

It was pointed out that lack of interest from some departments may be due to colleagues there not being interested in the activities the Subject Centre was offering.  It would be important to consider a variety of strategies for engaging as wide an audience as possible.

The Subject Centre were encouraged to consider ways of refining the roles of the departmental correspondents to ensure that it had effective agents in institutions.  

Baseline document
MHK outlined the rationale for the document: it would provide a snapshot of the state of the discipline at the time of the launch of the Subject Centres in January 2000.  It would be useful for the community to have this information: 

It was noted that it would be an enormous task to provide all the information proposed.  The Subject Centre should aim to produce a more impressionistic document and should not spend too long on it.  Any statistics should be provided with a cautionary note as these can often be misleading.

The board were invited to suggest useful sources of information.  UACES produce a register of European Studies courses, the initial report for the Nuffield Inquiry (1999) would also contain useful information.  The CUTG publishes a blue book which contains useful information on those teaching German in Higher Education.

It was clear that the LTSN were keen to have documentation which could be used to measure change in 3 year’s time.  It would be difficult to measure this using some of the documentation they were suggesting.

4.	Proposals for Subject Centre activity 2001-2002
Draft strategy document and operating statement
The strategy was accepted by the board.  A proposed amendment to aim 3 was accepted.  It was agreed that the aim should read ‘to have a significant effect in raising the level of support for learning and teaching across the board.’

The areas of activity outlined in the operating statement would be mapped more closely to the strategy document and would include all the proposals outlined in the presentations to the Board before the meeting.

5.	Relationship between the Subject Centre and ILT
The themes of the discussion document were discussed by the board.  ILT accreditation for Subject Centre events might be a motivating factor for ILT members.  However, it was felt that the ILT was not sufficiently accepted by the sector at present and that therefore closer links between the Subject Centre and the ILT would not raise the profile of Subject Centre activity.  

6.	Date of the next meeting
The meeting scheduled for 12 October 2001 had been cancelled.  The next meeting of the Advisory Board would therefore take place on Tuesday 15 January 2002 and would start at 1pm.