| By: Ian Essling
When the Fall 2006 schedule for Waubonsee comes out in a few months, students are going to notice a brand new section of classes available for their learning pleasure: Japanese.
The interesting thing about this curriculum addition is that no one on the board of directors proposed or seconded this motion. No teachers spoke to their deans about it.
In fact, the person who spearheaded the effort to add Japanese to Waubonsee's classroom offerings was none other then your fellow student, Bethany Meadows.
After months of hard work, Meadows succeeded in a project she started last November.
As of the fall 2006 semester, Japanese will be added to the growing list of foreign language classes offered at Waubonsee.
Meadows, who attended Oswego High School and is currently in her freshman year at Waubonsee, compiled a list of people who were interested in the course, and circulated a petition to add the class that garnered approximately 40 signatures.
She began this effort as a leadership project for Gustafson scholars, and she worked closely with the Liberal Arts department during the whole process.
Meadows' inspiration for adding Japanese to Waubonsee came from her interest in Japanese culture. "It's one of my main interests," she explains. Meadows is a huge fan of Japanese animation and comics, otherwise known as 'anime.'
Meadows expressed how she would love to go to Japan sometime in the future: "Tokyo, Okinawa, Kyoto, I'd love to see them all," she says.
Meadows interest in anime may also prove to be a possible career. She would like to go into animation and illustration, and she is hoping that she can eventually work in that field.
"I'd love to work on illustration and maybe storyboarding," she stated. "I'd prefer to work in animation as opposed to comics because there's much more output and it's more widely viewed."
Meadows gave the Liberal Arts department much of the credit for the success of the project. "Dr. Marzano and his secretary Sue [Baier] were very, very helpful.everyone was willing to put forth some extra work," she explains.
Dr. Marzano said this project is a great indication of Waubonsee's "Learning First" ideology.
Meadows will be taking Japanese next semester, and plans to transfer to North Michigan, Northern Illinois or University of Illinois when she finishes her studies at Waubonsee.  |
