Senator Barbara Mikulski Announces Grant of $1,010,496 to National Foreign Language Center at the Johns Hopkins University for "Language Network"

Wednesday, August 18, 1999

Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD) has announced that the National Foreign Language Center at the Johns Hopkins University will receive a grant from the Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) of more than one million dollars to upgrade and improve the "Language Network" (LangNet), an on-line system to catalog, search and deliver language learning, teaching and administering resources. The grant will extend for three years.

"In today's global village, the ability to speak another language is crucial to so many endeavors, from travel to commerce to diplomacy," said Senator Mikulski. "These improvements to LangNet will benefit language teachers across the country by supplying them with the tools they need right at their fingertips."

LangNet provides an infrastructure for language teachers across the country. With the improvements to LangNet, institutions and individual educators will have direct access, anytime and anywhere, to quality resources and on-line services, teacher training and professional development, and access to the best available resources for teaching and learning German, Japanese and Spanish. With the new on-line format, teachers will be able to search the LangNet database for the specific information they need right from their personal computer.

The National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) at the Johns Hopkins University created the Language Network. With this grant, the NFLC will collaborate with four other language education organizations to substantially improve the capacity and programming of LangNet. NFLC will work with the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages, the American Association of Teachers of German, the American Association of Teachers of Japanese, and the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese.

Senator Mikulski serves on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee which passed the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act in 1998. The grant of $1,010,496 will cover the period from September 1, 1999, through August 31, 2002.