"Students who are committed to their intellectual, cultural, and social development are successful in the language department, which offers them the opportunity to become fluent in another language and literate in another culture.  Those who feel they lack oral proficiency can seek tutoring in French, Italian, or Spanish or enroll in Latin or ancient Greek, both of which are taught as literary not spoken languages." Dr. Ann Raia Professor Modern Foreign Languages School of Arts & Sciences The College of New Rochelle

What is your educational background, Dr. Raia?

I attended Hunter College High School in Manhattan and received a Bachelors degree in Classics from Queens College. I was awarded an NDEA fellowship to Fordham University, where I received a Masters and PhD degree in Classical, Medieval, Humanistic Philosophy & Philology.

How long have you been at The College of New Rochelle?

I was hired to teach classics at CNR directly from graduate school, intending to stay for a few years. The warm welcome I received from Ursulines and lay faculty made it impossible for me to consider leaving. The college has played a major role in my life, as I met my husband, a part-time teacher of Italian, here and my son attended the CNR pre-school program.

What do you teach here, Dr. Raia?

Presently I am teaching Latin, Greek, and “The Comic Spirit.” I have taught Freshman Seminar, Western Cultural Heritage, College Essay, Greek Tragedy, The Heroic Quest, and several different seminars in the Honors Program. I have also led summer study-tour courses to Egypt, Italy, and Greece.

Besides teaching, how are you involved in the College Community?

Currently I am teaching half-time. I was the founder and Director of the Honors Program for 28 years, and have served multiple terms on a wide variety of college and school committees.

What do you think makes CNR a special College?

This is a holistic community that is sensitive to the physical, intellectual, social, and spiritual development of all of its members. A talented staff of scholar-teachers offers a supportive value-added strong liberal arts education for students of a wide range of abilities and commitment levels. A close network of faculty colleagues and staff work to orient students to the college's traditions and culture of respectful civil discourse. Attentive to the future, the community honors its founding principles and its mission to educate the underserved, particularly women.

Tell us something about your website and publications?

I wrote The Worlds of Roman Women, published in March 2005, with two co-authors. I conceived this anthology of essays and Latin texts about and by Roman women while preparing to teach the Lation course Roman Women: Puella, Matrona, Meretrix at the college in Fall 2002.  It is a sourcebook for the intermediate level Latin student, so a full commentary appears on the page facing the Latin passage. In the final pre-publication stages it became clear that the book could not accommodate all the illustrations and texts we authors had discovered.  In December 2005 I began to design The Online Companion to The Worlds of Roman Women  and published it with my co-author in June 2006. The website is much more user-friendly in that it offers a multiplicity of images and links to a wide array of linguistic, bibliographic, pedagogical and cultural resources. This past year I have given presentations at five regional and national classical meetings about the effectiveness of both the text and the website for Latin teaching. A work in progress, I have invited other faculty to join this communal web project which is free and open to all.

Why should students learn another language?

It is important for college students to know at least one other language and to become knowledgeable about other cultures for their own personal development and to live fully and wisely in the modern world, which has become a global village. Cultural ideas and habits of thought are embedded in language and defy easy translation into another language.

What are the advantages of studying Latin, or a foreign language while an undergraduate?

Studying a foreign language is linguistic training in the great liberal arts tradition. It offers students another mode of development of their critical abilities at a time in their lives when they have the leisure to study intensely. It enables students to read literature which illustrates the cultures of other traditions in the words of the members of that culture. It challenges students to step out of a monocultural perspective to see other ways of thinking and living. Having a language ability offers classic ideas in the words in which those ideas were framed. It expands the arsenal of communication open to students, allowing them to better understand their own language. It clarifies the notion that there is no real possibility of "translation" of words and ideas without understanding of cultural mores and expression.

What and where do your students go after leaving CNR?

Language students from The College of New Rochelle enroll in graduate school and enter the world of work in a variety of fields.  Comfortable with their ability to communicate, they seek foreign travel and employment abroad as well as in the US.  Students who major in Classics often go onto earn advanced degrees, but not always in the Classics. Many have entered teaching careers at the high school and college levels or work in libraries or museums, law offices or the corporate world.

Related link:
The Online Companion to The Worlds of Roman Women