Covenant offers classes in American Sign Language, French, German, and Spanish.

Mission

The mission of the Foreign Language Department is to aid students in:

• Gaining knowledge and appreciation of languages other than English; that is, their linguistic structure and the cultures and literatures that make use of these languages.
• Achieving an appropriate level of proficiency in each of the five language skills: understanding, speaking, reading, writing, and cultural knowledge.
• Reaching some understanding of language as an important aspect of our being created in the image of God, and as a basic means of expressing God’s love and salvation in a meaningful and personal way.

Faculty

• Assistant Professor of Foreign Language Dr. Jiewon Baek (University of Minnesota) teaches cultural studies in French. Her research interests include 20th-century and contemporary French literature, philosophy, and visual culture. Additionally, she enjoys painting, running, reading, French wine, hosting dinner parties, loving her twelve nieces and nephews, and returning to Paris as often as possible.
• Dr. Sandy Shaw retired a few years ago, and has been teaching as an adjunct since then, but officially ended his adjunct position at the end of the last academic year.
• Assistant Professor of Spanish Dr. Brianne Stambaugh (University of Alabama) researches effective strategies for teaching Spanish, including incorporating technology into the foreign language classroom and how the Spanish used outside of the foreign language classroom affects students inside the classroom. Her personal hobbies include running the roads and trails of Chattanooga, reading, and exploring new places.
• Dr. Tom Neiles (Middlebury VT) is a professor of French and German and will be retiring at the end of this year. His research interests include Huguenot persecution in France and André Michaux, a French botanist and explorer of the late 18th century. He enjoys gardening, clearing areas for planting, and hiking and hopes to do more of these in retirement.

Faculty Presentations

• Dr. Jiewon Baek recently presented at the Modern Language Association's annual conference in January. The title of her presentation was "'L'aurore seule est ma couverture' : Sylvain George's Noir inconnu [wanderer] (2019).
• Dr. Brianne Stambaugh will be presenting "Teaching Spanish Conversation Skills Through Podcasts" at the annual conference for the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese in July.

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