Dr. E. Nicole Meyer, a professor of French at Augusta University’s Pamplin College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, has recently been honored by the United States’ French Embassy and the FACE Foundation with the prestigious Empowering French and Francophone Studies grant.
“I was one of very few who received the grant, so it’s a wonderful honor for Augusta University,” said Meyer, who is also the chair of the American Association of Teachers of French’s National Commission on French for Specific Purposes. “It was extremely competitive, so I was extremely excited to get it.”
Meyer expressed gratitude to Dr. Kim Davies, Dean of Pamplin and Dr. Seretha Williams, chair of English and World Languages, for their support of her work on this grant.
In addition to continuing to teach French and Women’s and Gender Studies, Meyer plans to collaborate with Dr. Clément Aubert and Dr. Edward Tremel, along with various other faculty members from the university’s School of Computer and Cyber Sciences. Dr. Craig Albert, director of the Master of Arts in Intelligence and Security Studies program, will also assist in integrating these disciplines to create new opportunities for increasing French enrollment.
“In Augusta, we have a unique opportunity to partner with Fort Gordon, who we already associate with, and the school of cyber and informational sciences here at the university,” she said. “That school is growing and I have students in my classes who sometimes have a science technology background, or a cyber studies background.”
Through the infusion of cyber-related French materials, lessons and activities, Meyer is proposing to integrate cyber science, information technology, cyber security and military security into the university’s pre-existing foreign language program. Looking to build upon current interest and existing innovative programs, Meyer said she desires to propel student capabilities, and make them even more competitive candidates in their career field.
“Why not represent the interests of our students? We really are the forefront in the United States for cyber studies … so it seemed an obvious fit to further engage students in the course as we move forward,” she said. “My approach to teaching French is always to focus on transferable skills with a growth mindset … for students to see how French is useful beyond certain boundaries.”
Meyer said partnering with Fort Gordon and the country’s current needs were also major contributing factors in her enthusiasm to expand French interest.
“Currently, the recruitment for terrorists is being done very often in French speaking countries; so, having Americans that are loyal to our country, who would have the ability to help in that fight, seems very natural as well,” she said.
Additionally, by introducing French to more students, Meyer said she wanted to showcase how other foreign countries successfully navigated technology and cyber sciences.
“The French and Israeli are very ahead in cyber apps and using cyber technologies in how they design them,” she said. “I already teach French for health and medical professionals, and within that I use a variety of apps. So, I’ve used lots of apps that the French have created to teach that course, and it seems the cyber aspect of that would also be useful.”
She hopes to incorporate this new focus in lessons at all levels of the program starting from French 1001 through the entire four-semester degree. Meyer said French is spoken in many countries across the world.
“There are more than 320 million French speakers worldwide, and it’s increasing greatly. It’s expected in 2025 to 2050 to increase to over 700 million,” said Meyer. “They’re very innovative in the cyber area in ways that complement how we do things in the United States, so it will help build my students’ knowledge in different ways by learning to use French materials and French approaches to help inspire them. The fact is, French is arguably the most useful world language outside of English for those fields.”
Meyer said she hopes the new focus, and the possibility of being the only program to pointedly combine French and cyber studies, will bring more students to Augusta University.
