Boost your future career opportunities by studying a language as a major or minor during your undergraduate career. Our colleagues in Auburn University (Alabama) have crunched the latest data and have come up with the first .

Now there is no need to run off to Alabama! You can employ this strategy here at Montclair State by declaring double majors and/or minors that include a language (or two, or three – the choice is yours, polyglot!).

Having a language as a major or minor on your transcript and on your resume is a piece of the puzzle in prepping for a competitive job market. Studying languages enhances your academic experience all around- both in and out of the classroom. Bonus: Working closely with an advisor helps you maintain a four-year graduation schedule. Win, win, and win!

The Benefits for You

Knowing a foreign language increases your marketability in a variety of fields. Here are just a few:

• Culinary Arts
• Film
• Philosophy
• Interior design
• Fashion and jewelry
• Graphic and furniture design
• Leisure and cultural tourism
• Art restoration
• Music
• Dance
• Science
• Transportation
• Computer and software services
• Energy and utilities
• Industrial manufacturing
• International Business
• Check out

Opportunities Offered In and Beyond the Classroom at Montclair State

• Preparation for teaching in our renowned Teacher Ed programs in various languages
• Hands-on experience through assisting faculty in language workshops and outreach events
• Translation courses, concentrations, and certificates offered
• Language and business courses offered including opportunities for interviews with local entrepreneurs for the Italian newspaper, La Voce di NY
• Coop Ed and internship opportunities
• Career Night events
• Participation in dialogues on the Humanities in the Start Up Economy
• Upcoming campus event on Subtitling: December 5, 2014
• Receptions and events with eminent writers and artists

The Perks of Not Being a WallFlower*

Why Being an Active Member in Our Language Clubs and Honor Societies is Great for Your Resume

• Put theory into practice
• Develop leadership skills
• Rack up event planning experience
• Incorporate inclusive practices into projects and events
• “Pay it forward” through community service

(*Side Note: Save the vicarious “wallflowering” for this .)

Questions?

To learn more about American Sign Language, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish, stop by Conrad Schmitt Hall, room 222 and visit the following department websites:

If you are interested in Classical Greek and Latin, please stop by Classics and General Humanities in Dickson Hall 151, and visit their website:

All four departments use the same change of major/minor form.

Bonus Panels Are Not Just For Comics
Here’s a little extra info about the logistics of adding a major or minor.

Transforming Your “Free Electives”
If you are not sure how to fit in a language, one easy strategy is to look at your four-year graduation plan (or two-year plan if you transferred with your Associate degree).

Those “Free Elective” credits are just waiting to be repurposed as language courses. You can dive in deeper by tying your language studies into general education requirement areas. F1, K2, World Languages and Cultures Requirements, and other GenEd areas offer courses from the languages departments. (Visit the for more information.)

Re-think your graduation plan, reference your “Analysis of Academic Progress” from , then consult your advisor to confirm your plans and address any questions when handing in your change of major/minor form.

Their two papers were accepted to the 6th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing 2013 to be held on October 14-18 in Nagoya, Japan.

1. Matthew Mulholland and Joanne Quinn. “Suicidal Tendencies: The Automatic Classification of Suicidal and Non-Suicidal Lyricists Using NLP.”

2. Katsiaryna Aharodnik, Marco Chang, Anna Feldman, and Jirka Hana. “Automatic identification of learners’ language background based on their writing in Czech.”

Congratulations, Matt, Joanne, Katsiaryna and Marco!

About the Program
In September 2012, ����vlog’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences began offering New Jersey’s first graduate certificate program in computational linguistics.

For more information about this growing and dynamic field, please visit News article:

and the Linguistics website at:  

Computational linguistics is a growing and dynamic field that combines both linguistics and computer science in developing natural language processing systems that support the interface of communication and computers. This interdisciplinary profession draws from a variety of disciplines teaming computer and cognitive scientists, mathematicians, and logicians with anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers, and linguists.

Beginning in September, ����vlog’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences will begin offering New Jersey’s first graduate certificate program in computational linguistics. The yearlong program is open to those with undergraduate or work backgrounds in either computer science or linguistics, as well as to those with an unrelated degree (additional coursework may be required).

“The world has two communication systems—numbers and words. Computational linguistics converts words into the numbers used by digital systems,” explains Eileen Fitzpatrick, professor and chair of the Department of Linguistics at ����vlog.

It is a field that appeals to individuals with a desire to develop cutting-edge tools that have practical applications and benefits in areas such as automated text analysis, speech-recognition, information retrieval, cryptography, among others. Those with related skills are in demand at companies like Google, IBM, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Amazon, the Educational Testing Service, and governmental and civilian organizations.

“Computational linguistics is developing rapidly with new applications emerging at an amazing pace,” says Anna Feldman, associate professor of linguistics and computer science. These include futuristic-sounding specialties such as “sentiment analysis” (a method of distilling opinions about products from the mountains of information found in online reviews) and “deception detection” (determining if someone is telling the truth or not by analyzing the way language is used).

Additional information can be found online by visiting .