When Mark Speare was asked a year and a half ago whether he thought managers in health sciences might want to take time out of their busy schedules to take a 10-week class at UCLA to learn basic Spanish, the chief human resources officer for UCLA Health Sciences thought they probably would.

 

After all, he noted, Spanish-speaking staff in health sciences had for years taken “English as a Second Language” classes offered by UCLA. So why shouldn’t English speakers, he said, gain “a better understanding of a language that is the first language for so any of our faculty and staff — not to mention the very people we serve?”

 

With that, Speare headed back to the classroom and started learning Spanish in February 2012.

 

 

For the past nine years, 124 UCLA staff — from shuttle bus drivers to janitorial supervisors and department managers — have completed the basic “Spanish as a Second Language” course. Some have even gone on to take a second-level Spanish course at UCLA. The program is offered by UCLA’s Staff Diversity and Compliance Office to help employees better serve the Latino community and to build stronger relationships among employees.  In addition to Health Sciences, departments that have participated include Housing and Dining Services, General Services, Transportation and Medical Services.

 

Now, for the first time since the program’s inception in 2004, classes will be open to staff and managers from departments campuswide. Beginning  Feb. 18 and running through April 24, a Spanish 1 class will meet Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. at the UCLA Wilshire Center. Cost for the 10-week class is $177 per student. Enrollment is limited to 30 people.

 

“We live in a very diverse society,” said Lee Walton, who coordinates the program and is a principal consultant for affirmative action and equal employment opportunity at UCLA. “It’s become increasingly important that we are prepared as a workforce to speak more than one language.”

 

The program began as a pilot project to enhance the cultural awareness of managers, especially those who led ethnically diverse staff members, by “placing them in a course environment that emphasizes the richness of Hispanic/Latino culture and language,” explained Associate Vice Chancellor of Campus Human Resources Lubbe Levin.

 

“It’s exciting to see how quickly those with English as their primary language can acquire an understanding and appreciation for a different language and culture,” Levin said. “It’s the inverse of situations experienced by immigrants and others who come to the U.S. with their own native language.”

 

Students learn basic vocabulary and grammar and listen, read, speak and write in Spanish in the class, which is the equivalent to a college-level course, taught by Susana Zarate, a UCLA alumna who also teaches Spanish at Santa Monica College and other area community colleges. The class also includes a cultural component taught by psychologist Jorge Cherbosque, co-director of UCLA’s Staff and Faculty Counseling Center.

 

“Mainstream America tends to generalize and lump whole cultures together across entire continents,” Speare said. “It was enlightening to learn of the many cultures and rich histories that actually comprise Latin America … I think it made us sensitive to Latino-based cultures in ways that most of us were clueless about before the class.”

 

Students have discussed cultural differences, learned about the Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) and Latino notions of death, attended cultural events, celebrated Cinco de Mayo and watched a documentary about being black in Latin America.

 

The results have been gratifying, said Zarate. Managers now able to speak Spanish with their staff members have noticed improved morale in the workplace. “Managers start to see things differently. As they work hard to learn Spanish, they begin to understand what it’s like for their staff members to learn English,” she said. “It’s an eye opener for them.”

 

Overall, the instructor said, “it really helped improve the dynamics of the work relationship. To me, that was critically important.”

 

“While my Spanish is as basic as basic gets,” said Speare, “I’ve been able to speak some with Latino patients and family members on the hospital floors and in the clinics. I used to have to look for someone to translate for me. If I couldn’t find one, I would just politely give up, smile and exit the room.”

 

To enroll or get more information, contact Walton at 310-794-0385 or at lwalton@saa.ucla.edu.