(The following is an excerpt of a letter from Carolina Morgan at Florida International University to her colleagues.
She dedicated a part of her letter to Russ.)
... But as we all know, the acquisition of language is a painful process to anyone
over six years old. I know, I have done it twice. The struggle with irregular
verbs,
word declinations and difficult guttural or tone sounds, requires great
motivation,
considerable effort and above all, gifted teachers.
I would like to take this opportunity to
honor one such teacher today. As
most of you know, Russell Campbell, professor emeritus
and long-serving director
of the Department of Applied Linguistics at UCLA left us this past
weekend
following a mercifully short battle with a reoccurrence of cancer.
I will not
recount his many accomplishments over a career that spanned nearly
40 years, at UCLA alone.
When
I arrived at the Anderson School in the Fall
of 1986, it was the same year Russ became the first
Director of the university’s
Language Resource Center. This was his creation, intended to bring
the search
for effective language acquisition outside the confines of traditional language
departments.
In the years that followed, he led UCLA’s Center for Language
Education and Research (CLEAR), its Center
for Pacific Rim Studies, and a large
number of TESL program in Mexico, Korea, Armenia, Japan, China, and France
among others.
In 1988, as I searched around for help in preparing a proposal for the new
Title VI competition for the
establishment of centers for international business
education and research by the US Dept of Education,
I turned to our Dean for
International Studies, John Hawkins, who immediately put me in touch with Russ.
From the beginning it was love at first sight. I knew from personal experience
as well as by reading
the DOE requirements that language fluency would be a
critical element of our program. But how to convince a
hard-nosed business
school that we should spend money on this? “Wouldn’t it be best
to fund faculty to find the next kink in the theory of exchange rate determination?” I
was told.
And how to bridge that often enormous chasm between business schools
and the humanities?
Russ and I became co-conspirators in this process. He and his team at the
LRC set out to design a program
that taught business language according to
a fundamental principle we both shared and believed in, and that
is that communication
is the key. Not so much reading and writing skills (a terrible thing to say
in front of this crowd) but the ability to participate in a meeting, greet
and negotiate with a client, or
manage instructions to a team. In other words,
be fully involved in the day-to-day work of a manager.
In order to get there, we experimented with methodology, designed measurement
scales, tried multiple
approaches and fought for time and resources with which
to further our joint goals.
This was a phenomenal experience and a tremendous opportunity for learning,
not only for our students, the
direct recipients of all of this TLC and professional
enthusiasm, but for other professionals in the field (many
in this room) who
benefited from the dissemination of Russ’ findings and methods, and for
me who had the privilege and the joy of knowing Russ and working with him.
Russ retired several times from UCLA,
formally in 1991, but by observing
him you would have never believed it. To the end, he was active in
CIBER’s
language programs, supervised Master’s and Ph.D. Theses, and served as
Dean of
the English Department of the American University of Armenia.
As I look at your program today and tomorrow, I
can’t help but think
how proud he must be of seeing how far we have come. He would have loved to
have been here, arguing with some, pushing others, and encouraging many. He
was a true friend, a
steadfast colleague and a great mentor. We honor him by
continuing his work as we do today. I know he is smiling
from up there, and
probably is planning to sneak out at the break to have one more cigarette now
that it doesn’t matter anymore.