| Term | Deadline |
|---|---|
| Fall 2024 | May 6, 2024 |
| Spring 2025 | December 5, 2024 |
Welcome to the Spanish Masters Program at CSUSB and the Department of World Languages and Literatures! Courses offered in the Spanish M.A. provide intensive study of Spanish and Spanish American literature and civilization, as well as Spanish linguistics.
Our program is designed for those students seeking to enhance their skills to teach at the secondary and community college level, as well as those students who desire to continue their studies for an advanced degree. The Spanish M.A. consists of 31 semester units. Currently, we offer only one option: Hispanic Literature, Linguistics, and Civilization.
Students will take 16 Core units, 12 Elective units, and 3 units of Culminating Experience (1 unit per course). The Spanish M.A. may be completed in two years.
Dr. Correa (far left) and former Department Chair, Thomas McGovern (center back), celebrated the Spanish Masters program with current and past Graduate students.
Additional Information for Continuing Students
- Masters candidates must be continuously registered. If a student plans to be absent for a term, a leave of absence application must be submitted. (See the Request for a Leave of Absence item on the Graduate Studies' Policies and Procedures.)
- Students who have completed all coursework in the Spanish Masters Program must maintain continuous registration prior to passing the Spanish Masters Exam, by enrolling in Spanish 6991. Failure to enroll in Span 6991 will be dismissal from the program. This is a university requirement.
- Students may participate in the University commencement ceremony only after passing the Spanish Masters Exam.
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Advancement to Candidacy Interview
Students pursuing the Spanish M.A. should, before completing 15 semester units toward the degree, prepare and file a document called “An Approved Graduate Program” with the Coordinator, Spanish Masters Program. It is recommended that you make an appointment with the coordinator before the end of the fall semester to complete this document. This process, referred to as the Advancement to Candidacy, is required before a Graduation Check is submitted.
Teaching Associate Program
The TA Program gives qualified graduate students in Spanish the opportunity to teach one course per term of beginning Spanish for the academic year.
As part of this program, TAs are actively mentored and supported. Spanish TAs teach a first-year Spanish language course generally during the Fall term. A faculty supervisor trains the TAs prior to the teaching appointment and mentors them during the appointments.
The associateships are paid positions, subject to collective bargaining.
The Spanish Teaching Associate Program is an essential component of the Spanish M.A. program and serves as a first career-step for aspiring lecturers and academics. In this program, graduate students engage in a paid college-level teaching practicum while being closely mentored by a Spanish faculty, and they develop a comprehensive teaching portfolio for use in future job applications. Each year, the Department of World Languages offers three or more TAships to qualifying candidates.
Many of our Spanish M.A. students teach Spanish at the elementary, middle, or high school level while taking courses in the Spanish M.A. program. Teaching a Spanish language class at the college level is quite different, as classes move at a faster pace, expectations are set much higher, and the instructor’s role and responsibilities, class management, and assessment techniques are very different. Therefore, we encourage any Spanish graduate student to apply for a TAship position, particularly during the second year of the Spanish M.A. program.
We admit only the very best Spanish M.A. students, who are mature, responsible, and dedicated to teaching and working with college students, to the TA Program. Therefore, these teaching positions are very competitive.
Apply for a TA position
Deadline
April 26, 2024 midnight
How to Apply
Items needed to submit
To submit this application, you will need the following. Please be advised that you will not be eligible to teach if all required documentation is not received.
Unofficial Transcript
A recent transcript.
Three (3) letters of recommendation
Letters should be from professors (or employers) that can address your ability to teach undergraduate Spanish classes.
When completing the application, you will need to provide the names and emails of the three people. Applicants will be responsible for informing their recommenders about this application and requesting the recommenders to submit the Recommendation Letter in a timely manner (online submission directly to WLL). Once this form is submitted, each recommender will receive an email from the department requesting that they complete and upload a letter for you.
Letter of Intent
The Letter of Intent is a 1 to 2-page, single-spaced, 12 pt., 1 inch-margin letter, written in Spanish that:
- Discusses how you meet the pre-requisites.
- Describes your previous teaching and/or tutoring positions, if any.
- Describes how you will benefit from this teaching experience.
Lesson Outline
The lesson outline is an outline for a 15-20 minute mini lesson on any Spanish grammar topic to be taught in a first-year Spanish language class.
Application
It is recommended that you do not begin this application until you have all of the necessary items. You will not be able to submit the application without them.
Complete the online Spanish TA Application.
Program Learning Outcomes
- Literary analysis – Students are able to describe, comment, and provide area-specific criticism pertaining to the literary genre, historical context, author, style and form of literary texts produced in the Spanish-speaking world.
- Cultural analysis – Students are able to describe, comment, and provide area-specific criticism pertaining to the cultural traditions, artifacts, and displays of a variety of Hispanic countries and areas of the Spanish-speaking world.
- Linguistic analysis of Spanish – Students are able to identify, produce, and understand complex language structures related to the phonetics, morphological, and syntactic systems of the Spanish language and its varieties.
- Socio-historic analysis of Spanish – Students are able to identify, produce, and understand the relationship between language structure and society, as well as possess advanced knowledge of the historical and geographical perspective of variation and change in the Spanish language.
Student Spotlights
Miguel Ángel Romera-Álvarez named the College of Arts and Letters Outstanding Graduate Student for 2020-21
Extremely intelligent, highly organized and totally committed to the goal at hand, Miguel is a true role model for all students.
- Dr. Rafael Correa, Professor of Spanish, Coordinator, M.A. in Spanish Program
Miguel Ángel Romera-Álvarez grew up in Granada, Spain and completed his undergraduate degree in Hispanic Philology at the Universidad de Granada. During his undergraduate career, he conducted research in Spanish dialectology and sociolinguistics by conducting interviews about regional dialects of Spanish at a local bus station and in his village. He also published poetry and wrote a textbook entitled Introduction to the Workforce: Spanish for Business as his capstone project. In 2018, he began the M.A. in Spanish program at CSUSB, where he served as a Teaching Assistant in Spanish during academic year 2019-20. While completing his coursework for the M.A. in Spanish, he also published several works of poetry in Voices, the literary magazine of the Department of World Languages & Literatures. Miguel Ángel explained that the university has fostered an appreciation for diversity: “CSUSB has helped me adapt and integrate myself into a new country. I had a good base knowledge of U.S. culture and society but after my time at CSUSB, I have come to appreciate the great variety of world cultures, ethnicities, and influences that make this land so special. I believe that respecting and caring for this diversity is our future and mine as well.” After graduating in 2021, he hopes to complete a Ph.D. in Spanish and become a university professor.
Miguel Ángel Romera-Álvarez is an exceptional student, one of the top 1% of students of my entire career at CSUSB.
- Dr. Carmen Jany, Professor of Spanish and Linguistics
Scholarship Recipient
Juanita Cervantes, one of our Spanish Graduate students, received the Inland Empire Hispanic Leadership Council Scholarship 2019.
Outstanding 2018 Graduate Student: Angélica Bañuelos
Angélica Bañuelos has a natural literary curiosity, is ambitious in the tasks she undertakes and is always successful in completing them. She is quite apt in her research skills and goes well beyond what is required of a graduate student and has always demonstrated an honest and sincere interaction with her professors and fellow students. Angélica’s strengths are reliability, initiative, dedication, and integrity. She presented her research at the Tradición y Globalización Latin American International Conference in Cuernavaca, México in August 2016. Ms. Bañuelos is always willing to help her fellow students.