With the 2005 Fall Pre-college and college enrollment census underway, CCPCR has launched a new pre-college teacher list feature on the CCPCR website. This alphabetical listing provides a newly-expanded searchable data base using the merged information from the lists of CCPCR, ACTR, and AATSEEL. The resulting list is available at one mouse click on the CCPCR home page, with continually updated mailing and e-mail address information. This list also identifies non-functioning e-mail addresses which plague all our our organizational address lists. This list is not restricted to teachers who belong to ACTR, AATSEEL, or AAASS. It is rather intended to provide accurate information for contact all pre-college teachers and their programs, irrespective of organizational affiliation.

In the fall of 2004, CCPCR marked its 20th year of tracking enrollments of pre-college students of Russian, and the third year of tracking college-level enrollments. In both the pre-college and college census information displayed, the responses of institutions under-represents the actual number of students and teachers, but provides a comparative picture of trends. The new listing initiative is prompted by the need to significantly increase the base of information, and will be used in conjunction with the next stage of gathering data described below.

For the Fall 2004 enrollment data now posted on the CCPCR website, e-mail requests were sent to all schools with previously-identified teacher e-mail addresses, and two follow-up requests were sent to those programs that did not respond. After the third e-mail request, letters with response forms were sent to over 100 schools—an approach which resulted in only four returns. By mid-spring it was clear that e-mail and snail mail are simply not producing the desired results. At the beginning of May, a total of 83 pre-college schools had reported a total enrollment of 5176 students with 93 teachers in 28 states. A comparison with 2003 (4747 students, 77 teachers, 29 states) shows a rather stable enrollment pattern between the two years for the schools which reliably report their data, but non-responding schools clearly skew the picture for those who need data to justify textbook publication, funding for nationally-based teacher and student programs, etc.

Consequently, a methodical process of placing phone calls to non-responding schools will be launched in February to clarify the status of those programs. Calls will also be placed to schools whose teachers list no e-mail address, and of course to schools where teacher e-mail addresses no longer function. Time permitting, the same approach will be used to expand the data posted thus far in CCPCR’s census of 1st and 2nd year college enrollments in Russian.

A heartening observation can be made from the census data already gathered. The loss of existing programs through termination (161 programs documented between 1998-2005, only a handful in 2004-05), has markedly slowed to a trickle from the flood of previous years. These terminated programs, all listed on the CCPCR website, reflect particularly heavy losses up to 2004 in certain states: 11 in Alaska, 6 in California and Colorado, 7 in Illinois, 14 in Iowa, 6 in Maryland, 14 in Minnesota, 15 in New York, and 9 in Pennsylvania. A similar survey of terminated or reduced college-level programs has not been conducted.

The response of college programs submitting first- and second-y ear Russian enrollments has been spotty, but their data is also beginning to provide a picture of trends. For each program, numbers are available on one website page--most for two to three years running--for those colleges and universities that have submitted data. What emerges is a sense of the size of programs across the country, and a sense of basic enrollment stability--even growth in some cases.
To assist communication, in both the pre-college and college level data displayed on the CCPCR website, direct e-mail links are provided to enable users to contact the individual faculty members at the programs displayed. If your program is not now represented in the census, please help by forwarding to me contact information (preferably an e-mail address) for someone at your institution who could provide the data. My contact information is given below.