Welcome to ILES
The Institute of Linguistics, English as a Second Language, and Slavic Languages and Literatures (ILES) is a unit of the College of Liberal Arts and is located on the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota. ILES offers a variety of programs of study. The Institute is the academic home of 13 full-time faculty who do research and teach about a broad range of related disciplines: general linguistics; applied linguistics, especially learning second (or "foreign") languages; and Slavic and Central Asian languages and literatures. In addition to the regular faculty, several lecturers and teaching specialists are housed in ILES. These educators serve undergraduate students with majors in the fields of Linguistics and Russian, minors in English as a Second Language and Linguistics; and graduate programs in Linguistics (M.A. and Ph.D.) and English as a Second Language (M.A.).
More than 1,500 other non-majoring students regularly take courses in these disciplines and other Institute fields such as Central Asian Studies, Polish Language and Literature, and Turkish Languages and Culture.
Mission Statement
To support the educational goals of the University of Minnesota and of its College of Liberal Arts by advancing programs of research and teaching relating to Linguistics, to English as a Second Language and to second-language learning in general, and to the Slavic and Central Asian languages, literatures, and cultures. The Institute encourages and supports research in these areas, develops and maintains curricula which contribute to the general degree programs of the College and to the several undergraduate and graduate majors which are the special responsibility of the Institute, and collaborates with other academic units to promote the advancement of these areas of knowledge.
