Double Dutch: How do Dutch studies at Stanford and Berkeley compare?

Whenever Esmée van der Hoeven’s students learn that she teaches Dutch language at both Stanford and UC Berkeley, the inevitable follow up question is: “Which school do you like more?”

“I always answer with, ‘I like everyone who wants to learn Dutch,’” said van der Hoeven with a laugh. “The students at both campuses are the same in that way.”

The Stanford-Cal rivalry holds decades of athletic competition. Most people have strong allegiances to one or the other. Van der Hoeven, however, prefers to stay impartial.

After moving to the Bay Area around 10 years ago, van der Hoeven wasn’t sure whether she would find a job teaching Dutch. In her home country of the Netherlands, she had also been a language instructor, teaching Dutch to international students at Delft University of Technology.

Somewhat serendipitously, a few months after van der Hoeven called UC Berkeley expressing interest in their Dutch Studies program, the language lecturer position opened up. She was hired shortly after.

A somewhat obvious but nevertheless major difference between teaching Dutch in the United States versus in the Netherlands turned out to be the lack of Dutch immersion opportunities outside of the classroom.

“You can’t assign going to the grocery store as homework practice,” she joked.

Around five years after starting at UC Berkeley, van der Hoeven received a call from the Special Language Program at Stanford. Students had expressed interest in learning Dutch, and she was invited to begin teaching a sequence at the University.

“At both schools, I get a mix of students who are completely new to Dutch, students who are heritage speakers and students who have some sort of connection or investment in the language,” she shared.

Compared to UC Berkeley’s Dutch Studies program, which has been in existence since 1966, van der Hoeven was called to Stanford on a need-to-need basis. Yet, when asked about student interest in learning Dutch, she noted that current day interest was not too different among the student bodies.

“Of course, Berkeley is a much bigger university, so I have some more students at Berkeley than I do at Stanford, and since they have a Dutch Studies program, there are more classes and more levels of Dutch offered, but there aren’t actually that many majors and minors,” shared van der Hoeven. “It makes sense; students aren’t going to one of the best universities in the world to dive completely into a language. It’s something you do on the side.”

Van der Hoeven teaches first-year Dutch at Stanford on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This year, she has nine students completing the first-year sequence, and if a majority of them want to continue, she will teach second-year Dutch the following year; her 2019 cohort completed up to third-year Dutch and became quite close-knit as a result. However, interest varies year to year, and if fewer students want to continue, she will teach First-Year Dutch again next year to gauge more interest.

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, van der Hoeven teaches Elementary Dutch, Advanced Dutch, and Dutch for Reading Knowledge, a class for graduate students in other departments, at Berkeley. There, several of her students plan to study abroad in the Netherlands through the UC Education Abroad Program (Stanford does not have a study abroad program in the Netherlands).

Van der Hoeven insisted that all of her students at Stanford and Berkeley were “among the brightest in the country,” “smart, eager to learn” and “motivated.” At Stanford, most students sign up to take the full first-year sequence, which allows her to get to know them on a more personal level, especially given the smaller cohort than at Berkeley, where some students only take Dutch for a semester. At Berkeley, she notes “more consistency” from students who organize weekly coffee hours and movie nights for Dutch language practice, and more opportunities for events outside of class hours.

The opportunity to teach at both universities is rare and one that van der Hoeven feels privileged to have. “It’s always a concern, is there money for smaller programs?” she replied when asked how long she sees herself teaching Dutch, “but as long as there is demand, this is something that I love to do.”

As for Saturday, van der Hoeven joked that she would be pleased with the outcome either way.

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