On March 26, 2025, Skidmore College's World Languages and Literatures Department announced during a Zoom meeting its decision to eliminate the Self-Instructed Language Program (SILP) from the course catalog. SILP allowed students to study a language independently while meeting with an instructor for two hours per week. Many students opted to take two semesters of SILP to fulfill their four-credit language requirement.
During the meeting, it was stated that students who had completed only one semester of SILP would have to finish their requirement with a second semester in Fall 2025. However, the meeting did not mention a key detail: each of those students had received an email offering them the option to opt out of the second semester entirely. According to the email, students could fulfill their language requirement with just one semester of SILP—effectively waiving the full four-credit requirement.
Six languages were offered under the SILP umbrella: Portuguese, Korean, Russian, American Sign Language (ASL), Hebrew, and Arabic. The decision to eliminate the program followed a proposal by the Skidmore administration to transition four of these languages into traditional four-credit offerings, complete with enough courses to support minors. The department chose to promote Hebrew, Arabic, Korean, and ASL, while Russian and Portuguese were discontinued altogether due to lower student enrollment.
Professor Maria Lander, Chair of the World Languages and Literatures Department, expressed optimism about expanding the four promoted languages into full-credit tracks. While she acknowledged regret over discontinuing Portuguese and Russian, she emphasized that the change would ultimately create more focused opportunities for students studying Hebrew, Arabic, Korean, and ASL.
Professor Lander also stated that the SILP model was outdated, claiming it focused primarily on speaking and listening without sufficiently addressing reading and writing. However, this point has been contested—Portuguese instructor Janine Timko, for instance, argues that SILP effectively teaches reading and writing.
“We felt that [SILP] was not enough… We were given a great opportunity to have classes where all skills are covered: writing, reading, listening, speaking, and comprehension… it is really difficult to learn a language with only one skill. Language study on the university level is diminishing, so we are very excited about the college giving us this unique opportunity to expand Hebrew, Arabic, ASL, and Korean.”
There is another side to the story. Katya Kats and Janine Timko, instructors of Russian and Portuguese, respectively, hold differing views from Professor Lander regarding the decision to eliminate SILP.
Katya Kats argues that discontinuing Russian is particularly short-sighted, especially during a time of heightened global tensions involving Russia and the ongoing war in Ukraine. She believes this move disadvantages students interested in careers in foreign affairs, diplomacy, or international relations. Additionally, with a growing number of Ukrainian refugees resettling in the United States, Kats emphasizes that Russian remains a crucial language for those entering fields like social work and public service, where communication with displaced communities is key.
Janine Timko challenges the claim that SILP only teaches speaking and listening. While Professor Lander was primarily referring to the fact that SILP students are graded solely on a 15-minute oral exam at the end of the semester, Timko maintains that this does not reflect the full scope of instruction. She asserts that her students received a comprehensive education in Portuguese, including reading and writing skills.
“My students read the whole Portuguese textbook. Telling my students they didn’t learn to read and write is not true.”
Russian teacher Katya Kats also teaches her students how to read and write, and much like Janine Timko, she provides a textbook that the students are instructed to read.
Both instructors expressed frustration over the lack of communication from the department and administration regarding the option for students to forgo a second semester. Neither Timko nor Kats was directly informed that students who had completed only one semester of SILP were offered the chance to fulfill their language requirement with just two credit hours.
Kats, who has taught at Skidmore for 18 years, had assumed she would continue teaching through Fall 2025, based on the understanding that her students would need a second semester to graduate. Learning—secondhand, and from a student—that this was no longer the case came as a significant disappointment. For Kats, the lack of transparency added to the sense of disconnection and disregard surrounding the decision.