Director: Karen Suderman
The IEP is a pre-collegiate program of study in English as a second language designed to prepare students for admission to college or career advancement. Serving groups of learners with diverse goals and needs, the program provides opportunities for life-changing cross-cultural encounters leading to sustained intercultural learning. The program consists of 20 hours per week of classroom instruction in the core academic language skills: listening, speaking, reading, research-writing, and grammar. The IEP offers language enrichment activities that may include tutoring, field trips, cultural experiences and other activities to strengthen academic language skills.
The IEP Integrated Courses and weekly meetings with conversation partners give students additional hours of English practice. IEP's program of lively intercultural learning across the curriculum (LILAC) creates partnerships between IEP classes and EMU undergraduate classes to give international students opportunities to work with American peers in completing authentic academic projects with an inter- cultural dimension
There are six proficiency levels (I –VI) in the IEP. The Step-Up program is available, upon recommendation by the IEP, to qualifying students who have successfully completed a semester in level V of the IEP. These students may enroll in one course in the EMU undergraduate program with simultaneous enrollment in the IEP. Students take placement tests to determine their level. Assessments are administered at the end of the semester to evaluate students' progress. Students who complete the level V and VI and sub- sequently enroll at EMU for an under- graduate degree may receive up to 15 SH of credit. Before entering a full-time unrestricted undergraduate program, IEP students enter the Bridge Program (see the Special Programs section).
Students may be eligible to apply for combined admission to the IEP and the undergraduate program.
Further information and application forms can be found at www.emu.edu/iep.
IEP courses in levels I through IV do not earn academic credit. For work successfully completed in levels V and VI, up to 15 undergraduate semester credit hours may be counted towards fulfilling students' language and cross-cultural requirement in the general education curriculum. Please note that an IEP "hour" equals a period of 50 minutes. Throughout the university credit hours are based on the number of 50-minute class periods per week. Courses in the Fall and Spring semester are for a 15-week duration. The Summer semester is eight weeks in length; therefore, the class periods are longer each day to equal the necessary number of class time minutes for one semester of academic credit.
The program consists of 20 hours per week of classroom instruction in the basic language skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, research, and grammar. Multimedia equipment helps students improve pronunciation and listening comprehension. An IEP computer lab is available on campus for student use. In general the levels are combined, Levels I and II, Levels III and IV, and Levels V and VI meet together. When enrollment for a particular level is high enough the level will meet individually.