Master of Arts in Language Teaching

at Kaplan Group - Arizona State University - Tempe Campus USA

Work closely with expert faculty as you explore intersections of literature and culture or linguistics across the Spanish-speaking world, and become a global citizen prepared for countless career options.

The MA program in Spanish includes tracks in literature and culture and in linguistics. While the former includes Spanish, Spanish American and Mexican American literature and culture, the latter includes sociolinguistics or second language acquisition and applied linguistics.

Creative enterprise and cultural leadership students are changemakers and innovators working toward more just and sustainable futures that connect art and design to society. The program has a particular emphasis on impact and place, looking at how art practice intersects with the social, political, economic and other structures that shape communities. This cross-disciplinary, collaborative program merges theory and practice in arts management, civic practice, creative placemaking, leadership and the management of innovation in the expanded creative fields.

The MA program in creative enterprise and cultural leadership offers classes that mix theory and practice through applied learning in collaboration with a range of community, nonprofit, business and public sector partners. Local and national leaders engage with students in classes, site visits, collaborative projects and through a field experience that includes travel to another city. The program culminates with a capstone Applied Project that can take the form of research or the launch of a new project. In addition to core classes, students select additional focused coursework to advance their own professional goals and interests. The program offers several areas of curricular emphasis including creative placemaking and placekeeping, civic practice, cross-sector work and new business models.

Students in this program work on strategic visual communication design projects with a focus on visual design communication proposals as well as related practices that improve human experiences, enhance interaction with technology, increase business value, and speculate critically about social issues. Students engage in visual and theoretical research, ideation, visualization, prototyping and testing of creative solutions that address critical problems faced in the contemporary designed world.

Graduates of this program are adept in working with principles of visual communication design, emotional intelligence, and systems thinking in problem identification and its appropriate contextual solutions.

The faculty in religious studies offer a graduate program leading to the MA in religious studies.

Candidates are offered an opportunity to develop knowledge of various religious traditions in their historical and cultural contexts and to learn research methods. Although students often concentrate upon a single religious tradition for their thesis work, the program provides a broadly comparative understanding of religions, not simply a specialist's training in a single tradition.

ASU is certified by the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education and a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance - Research.

The MCS with a concentration in cybersecurity is an advanced degree program designed for graduate students who want to pursue a thorough education in the area of cybersecurity and information assurance; students with an undergraduate education in computing and related disciplines; and students employed in industry who can best profit from further breadth and background in computer science and information assurance.

This concentration provides students with the knowledge and skills in science and engineering pertaining to cybersecurity, including computer and network security, software security, data and information security, applied cryptography and computer forensics.

According to the National Security Agency, information assurance is defined as the set of measures intended to protect and defend information and information systems by ensuring their availability, integrity, authentication, confidentiality and nonrepudiation. This includes providing restoration of information systems by incorporating protection, detection and reaction capabilities.

Cybersecurity courseware at ASU has been certified by the Information Assurance Courseware Evaluation Program to satisfy the standards for Information Systems Security Professionals (NSTISSI 4011) and Senior Systems Managers (CNSSI 4012).

The life sciences involve the study of the basic organization and processes of life (microbes, plants and animals) at scales ranging from molecules to ecosystems and in time from picoseconds to millennia. This includes investigations into how hereditary information is transferred and organisms evolve, the interplay of organisms and their environments, and how these factors interact in health and disease.

Students interested in a degree in life sciences can opt for a BS in biological sciences or choose one of five concentrations:

• Biology and society
• Biomedical sciences
• Conservation biology and ecology
• Genetics, cell and developmental biology
• Neurobiology, physiology and behavior

The concentration in energy and environment within the BSE program in mechanical engineering is designed to prepare students to analyze technical problems in:

• Air pollution
• Climate change
• Energy efficiency
• Environmental sustainability
• Renewable energy
• Timely issues facing the global community

Although the primary focus of this program is technical, the general education courses in the areas of the humanities and social and behavioral sciences introduce students to the global, political and societal issues relating to energy and the environment.

By focusing on issues such as air pollution, water scarcity and the lack of alternative transportation, this program is even more attractive for employers in the greater Phoenix area as well as nationwide.

Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior. This diverse field includes mental health and counseling as well as child development, neuroscience and brain function, memory and decision-making, behavior analysis, statistics and crosses into other disciplines such as medicine, law, business and economics.

Emphasizing critical thinking and reasoning, and quantitative research methods and writing, this BS program in psychology goes beyond the classroom with practical experiences through internships, service-learning and faculty-supervised research. (Some opportunities are not available to students enrolled in the degree offered through ASU Online.)

The Bachelor of Science degree differs from the Bachelor of Arts degree in that it requires two additional lab courses and advanced statistical training, providing a greater depth of knowledge in the biological and neuroscientific aspects of psychology that are increasingly important both for research and for clinical practice. The advanced statistical training further prepares students for careers and graduate training involving psychological research, clinical research and legal policy research.

Astrobiology studies the origins, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe. Biogeoscience focuses on the interaction of biological, geological and chemical processes on Earth in the present, past and future. These topics are closely related because the concepts of biogeoscience inform the study of planetary habitability and the search for habitable worlds.

Therefore, the astrobiology and biogeoscience concentration in the BS program in earth and space exploration is designed to offer students a strong foundation for exploring the interaction of geological and biological processes and understanding how such interactions sustain life on Earth and how they might operate on other planets. Those with this necessary scientific background contribute to the search for life on other planets, explore the life of extreme environments here on Earth and better understand how life on Earth responds to past, current and future global changes.

The BAE program for elementary education with a concentration in educating multilingual learners offers students a firm grounding in current research and critical pedagogy for English language learners, accompanied by professional experiences that expose students to more ways of teaching and learning.

Students in this program are prepared to nurture and develop languages other than English in dual-language settings and to value the rich linguistic resources that are present in any classroom to support student learning. Students take several courses that focus on developing teachers for linguistically and culturally diverse settings. These courses include topics such as language diversity, dialectal variation, funds of knowledge, and practices that value cultural and community engagements.

Understanding the challenges that emerging bilinguals face instructionally, coupled with understanding the implications of language policy in various learning contexts is imperative to student experiences and coursework. Students learn processes for identifying English language learners as well as developing and supporting the needs of students with individual language learning plans. Students also receive preparation in teaching academic content areas including math, language arts, computer literacy and science with a specific focus on meeting the academic and linguistic needs of English language learners.

The program requires six credit hours of a foreign language or its equivalent and enables students to work with second-language learners.

The elementary education EML teacher certification program is clinically embedded during the junior and senior years. During this time, students are intentionally and directly implementing course learning and theory to practices in the classroom. Strategies within the EML program focus on foundations of second language acquisition, biliteracy, culturally relevant pedagogy, effective language instruction and prepares pre-service teachers to develop critical perspectives that allows them to advocate for bilingual children and families.