Starting with the class of 2027, students will have the option of taking a Global Language mode of inquiry (MOI) following a faculty vote on Jan. 20. 

The Global Language (GL) MOI is meant to encourage students to explore a language beyond English and can be fulfilled by taking a foreign language class at Bates, according to Alexandre Dauge-Roth, a professor of French and Francophone studies who spearheaded the new MOI. 

Currently students are required to take a course tagged with each of five MOIs including Analysis and Critique (AC), Creative Process and Production (CP), Historical and Social Inquiry (HS), Scientific Reasoning (SR) and Quantitative and Formal Reasoning (QF). 

With the addition of a sixth MOI, students will not be required to take courses in all six MOIs. Instead, they will only have to complete five out of six MOIs to graduate.

When informed about the easing of MOI requirements, many students at Bates were enthusiastic. 

First year Emyr Lo ‘29 shared that they thought the new rule was “really cool” and fit Bates’ institutional commitment to “academic exploration and freedom” better than the previous MOI policy. Lo added that they originally thought Bates had an open curriculum and were disappointed to find out about the MOI requirements upon arriving on campus for the first time this August. For many students, Lo expressed that fulfilling all your MOI requirements can be “really annoying and stressful,” especially for those “who do not like STEM.” 

Dauge-Roth echoed Lo’s concerns and explained that the five MOIs have been difficult for students to fulfill in the past, as the course choices were limited.  “Having five out of six MOIs,” he said, “gives students more flexibility and… they can be more intentional and more purposeful in their choices because they can really pursue what they are interested in.” 

Besides increasing students’ academic freedom and flexibility, the Global Language MOI has another goal: getting more Batesies interested in language learning. Amid falling language enrollment at Bates, Dauge-Roth shared that he — and the other language professors at Bates — created and rallied around the Global Language MOI to try to boost language enrollment at Bates. 

“In the last ten years at the national level, there has been a decline in students taking courses that are… not taught in English in general across the U.S.,” said Dauge-Roth. “Bates has done better than the national trends, but nonetheless, we’ve been affected by that trend… to the point where we don’t have, in our view… enough students in our classes.”

Dauge-Roth shared that Bates’ language programs — with the exception of Spanish and Japanese —  have experienced a 10% to 30% drop in enrollment. He thinks that the rise of machine translation services such as Google Translate might be to blame for students turning away from language learning. 

In this instance, the choice to not mandate the Global Language MOI was actually more controversial among faculty than the creation of this new MOI, added Dauge-Roth. 

Although the faculty voted overwhelmingly in favor of the new MOI (89-26 with 3 abstentions), the most common criticism levied against the measure was that it would allow students to opt out of MOIs and result in a less academically well-rounded student body. In particular, there were concerns that fewer students would enroll in the Scientific Reasoning MOI, which currently offers the fewest courses of any MOI. Rather than support the previous MOIs policy, many professors who held this view were in favor of making all six MOIs mandatory, according to Dauge-Roth. 

Dauge-Roth explained that requiring all six MOIs would be impossible because Bates does not have enough language professors to teach every student a foreign language.

Mollie Woodworth, an assistant professor of neuroscience, said that the new MOI likely won’t result in a decrease of Batesies taking SR courses. She shared that currently STEM professors struggle with over-enrollement, not under-enrollement. She explained that many SR classes tend to be challenging to get into since students have to compete with STEM majors and those on the pred-med track. 

She noted that no longer mandating the SR requirement might reduce the burden on Bates’ STEM professors to accommodate everyone who needs a seat in their courses and that “I can really understand wanting to give people a little bit of a carrot [or] incentive to stick with a language… as a neuroscientist, it is good for your brain.” 

“If I have fewer folks from outside the life science majors taking [my classes] because they’ve decided to take a language instead of an SR, I’m fine with that… I’d love to have them… but it’s a perfectly valid choice” she said. “If we see a significant shift away from [students] focusing on science, it’s incumbent on us to design courses that are more attractive to [the general student body].” 

Although she shared that she would love to see more students take a language at Bates, she said she didn’t know whether the new MOI policy was “objectively better,” and questioned whether “we’re going to see a huge difference” in foreign language enrollment at Bates, noting that the CP requirement already encourages students to take language classes. 

According to Dauge-Roth, however, the CP MOI has not been effective in generating student interest in foreign languages. Because it only applies to elementary-level language courses, students who wanted to start a language at a more advanced level could not earn a MOI for it — an issue that a new Global Language MOI will solve.

The new MOI will only apply to languages taught at Bates and comes with certain stipulations and requirements. 

Under this new change, Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB) and A-Level courses will no longer count as direct equivalents to language classes at Bates. Previously, a student who took AP French, for example, could receive credit for a specific Bates course, such as French 201, and earn any associated MOIs, according to Dauge-Roth. Now, students will only receive an unspecified credit, though language professors will still use AP, IB  and A-Level results to place students in the appropriate course level.

According to Dauge-Roth, this new policy is only fair, as many departments on campus — especially in STEM — also do not grant direct equivalences between their courses and those taken at high school. 

“Many high school students have been in a lab, have done math, have tried to understand why a brick falls on the ground and doesn’t fly in the sky when we are on Earth,” said Dauge-Roth “but they don’t get any kind of  MOI credit for what they’ve done in high school.” 

The new MOI also has other limits. Students studying abroad will not be able to use credits from language classes not offered at Bates. 

Only Bates courses starting in Fall 2026 and marked with the new GL tag will count towards the Global Language MOI. 

Angelica Paniagua ‘28 expressed excitement at the new change, but disappointment that the Global Language MOI had not been introduced earlier. 

“It’s great that they’re encouraging students to take more languages because for me, personally, I have never felt like I had the time to take [all the] foreign languages [I wanted to],” Paniagua ‘28 said. She added that if the new Global Language MOI had been available, she would have taken advanced French classes last fall instead of an SR course. 

Dauge-Roth said that, in part, the Global Language MOI is designed to attract students like Paniagua ’28, who have already taken language classes in high school and wish to continue it in college — but previously felt like they did not have enough time or flexibility in their schedule to explore their academic interests freely.