The BLC Turns 30: A Celebration Commemorating its Legacy and Looking to its Future

The Berkeley Language Center (BLC) recently celebrated 30 years of supporting excellence in  language and culture instruction and building community and belonging on campus. On April 24, a crowd of about 60 gathered in Ishi Court for speeches and a reception marking the occasion. Attendees included past BLC directors, language department staff, coordinators, instructors, graduate students and fellows. The reception was generously supported by an Arts & Humanities Community Grant.

Founded in 1994 under the direction of Claire Kramsch, Professor Emerita of German, the BLC represented an expansion and a new programming mission of what was formerly the Language Laboratory, located in Dwinelle Hall since the 1960s. Since the 1990s, it has served as a hub for language learning and instruction on campus, offering continued professional development opportunities, material support, classroom infrastructure and a space to exchange ideas and strengthen community. Kramsch delivered remarks reflecting on the center’s founding animating mission in the context of a new valuation of educational and exchange programs promoting international awareness in the decades following President Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

Since 1994 the center has hosted over 250 talks, panels and conferences, all geared towards communicating contemporary currents in applied language studies, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and world languages pedagogy and research. 1996 marked the start of the BLC Fellows Program: created to advance professional development and theoretical expertise in Second Language Acquisition (SLA), it would go on to support more than 200 lecturers and graduate students in developing innovative courses, instructional materials, and other pedagogical projects and empirical research. In 2008, the center under Mark Kaiser’s leadership launched Lumière, an online library of world language films that currently features more than 8,000 films in 191 languages. The BLC has also been home to L2 Journalsince 2009, an open access, fully refereed interdisciplinary journal focused on the practice and research of world language instruction.

In addition to its extensive programming for language instructors and graduate students, the center is actively developing robust offerings geared towards language learners. Since 2012, Words in Action, under the direction of Italian instructor Annamaria Bellezza, has given thousands of undergraduates the chance to perform in their language of study. More recently an annual competition, Exploring the Boundaries of Translation, invites undergraduates to consider the limits and challenges of translation. This year the Center also debuted a new Undergraduate Advisory Council, charged with representing and promoting the vitality of language study on campus. 

Currently, Executive Director Kimberly Vinall and Associate Director Emily Hellmich are leading a new initiative dedicated to exploring the intersections of language and AI. The goals of this initiative are to engage the Berkeley campus in cross-disciplinary conversations around AI and language; produce and provide resources for (language) instructors on how to critically and meaningfully integrate AI tools into the classroom; and support, engage in, and disseminate research at the intersection of language, language education, and AI.  

The 30 year commemoration featured speeches by generations of BLC leadership, including former Directors Claire Kramsch and Rick Kern, Mark Kaiser (former BLC Associate Director), and Kimberly Vinall. Senior Lecturer Emerita Karen Møller spoke on behalf of the center’s many teacher training coordinators over the years, as did Nancy Salsig and Don Doehla. The latter lead the Berkeley World Language Program (BWLP) initiative, geared toward Bay Area high school world language instructors.

In his speech, Kern stressed the critical function of the BLC at this particular juncture. At a time when the values of multiculturalism, diversity and inclusion face especially acute challenges and the U.S. has been formally proclaimed a monolingual nation, Kern emphasized that it is more important than ever that the BLC continue its mission into the future. While reminiscing about old times, those gathered at the party toasted to the next thirty years of the BLC’s important work.