CERTIFICATE PROGRAM
The certificates program in languages was instituted as a means to allow students who seek formal training in a modern foreign language but who, for reasons of time and other commitments, cannot complete the full requirements toward a major. With its sequence of courses, students in the program will systematically build up proficiency in the language and, in their senior year, will receive from the respective department a certificate officially attesting to their having fulfilled the requirements. Certificates are possible in French, German, Russian, Spanish.
At Williams, the Center for Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures has brought together faculty and students in Foreign Languages, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics since 1986. Faculty in all these areas are dedicated to promoting of the study of foreign languages, increasing connections with other cultures on campus and abroad, and encouraging intellectual development across disciplinary boundaries.
STUDENT PROFILE
Jonathan Earle '09
I was a Russianist from birth I think. My childhood dreams were full of Russian proton rockets,
Soviet T-34 tanks, and MiG fighter jets. The margins of my middle school notebooks are full of Cyrillic letters, some real and some invented. I took Russian my freshman fall at Williams because I thought Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were on to something, and because I wanted to find clues to my Jewish-Russian family’s past. I studied in St. Petersburg my Junior year at Smolny College. In my spare time I translated documents for local NGOs on issues relating to the environment and the Russian armed forces. My fondest memory is playing Mafia with a group of Russians on a sunny day by the Gulf of Finland.
For now, I received the gold medal in the national post-secondary essay contest awarded by the American Council of Teachers of Russian, and after graduation, I hope to promote friendship
and understanding between Americans and Russians.
