Mission Statement

Purpose

The Intensive English Program serves groups of learners with diverse goals and needs by providing English language instruction and opportunities for life-changing cross-cultural encounters leading to sustained intercultural learning. By fostering the development of language skills and intercultural understanding, IEP prepares students to walk in the ways of nonviolence and peace and to experience the Christ who saw himself in strangers needing to be welcomed and embraced as members of a human society.

Program

The Intensive English Program aims:

1. To implement lively intercultural learning on campus among students of diverse cultural backgrounds, learning from each other in such a way as to complement the sending of EMU students and faculty going into the world for cross-cultural study.
2. To develop learners’ cognitive and academic English language skills so that they may succeed in higher studies at EMU or other U.S. institutions of higher learning or advance in their careers.
3. To serve the worldwide Mennonite church by opening the door of Mennonite higher education and leadership training to Mennonite students and others sponsored by Mennonite agencies.
4. To provide short and long term study abroad experiences for internationals who desire to study through immersion in an English-speaking, U.S. cultural context without pursuing a degree from any university.
5. To be a laboratory for training teachers of English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) for EMU students in the TESOL minor, as well as Master of Education students with a TESOL concentration. The IEP also provides English language tutor training.

Organizational Structure

The Intensive English Program is under the supervision of the Undergraduate Dean. It is a pre-collegiate course of study, but undergraduate credit hours may be earned by transferring to the EMU undergraduate program, or associated colleges and universities, and satisfactorily completing two semesters of study.