Glasscock School of Continuing Studies

The service is great !! I studied here for 4 months and the employees are excellent. Teachers are terriffic. You should visit them !!

I’m taking beginning French classes here this semester. The classes are definitely expensive — they were $ 420 for an eight week session. There are 2 classes each week, each an hour and a half. In addition to the price of the course, on the first day you will also be given a list of books/​materials that are needed. In my case, I only needed to buy one book, which ended up being around $ 100 on Amazon for the loose-​leaf version. That actually wasn’t too bad for a textbook.
I’m currently on the 3^rd week of classes, and despite the hefty price tag, I don’t regret it. So far we have already covered basic introductions, taking leave, adjectives for describing people, classroom objects, colours, and very basic grammar. Further, because of the constant classes, I definitely feel like it builds a great fun and supportive group. One of my classmates brought in French books he had found and gifted one to each of us, and we’ve discussed watching French movies and getting together to work on homework. All in all, this is a bucket-​list item for me coming true.
The class is located at the Anderson-​Clarke building at Rice. With the price of tuition, they give you a free parking pass which is really nice. Unfortunately, this is located quite far from where I generally work, so since the classes take place during traffic hours on week days I end up running late to every class.
Lastly, one potential negative is that a vast majority of whether one would succeed in this class will rely on the student practicing outside of class since it is actually quite fast paced. Madame Larsen focuses a lot on pronunciation, and requests that students record the classes in order to facilitate further practice.
All in all, I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is either able to get their company to sponsor foreign language classes, or has the time/​money to spare on a lifelong skill.

This review is for Spanish classes which I took and wish I could continue taking these days. I had a great experience and a wonderful teacher. I do wish the classes ran on a different pace (slower) since I really could’ve used more practice speaking new phrases and words in class. I am not such a slow language learner, but ideally I needed a Spanish speaking friend to practice with outside of class. Nonetheless since I was new in town this was a wonderful place to pick up Spanish post college and to even make a few friends too.

GSCS is really organized and I think they did a great job of taking care of the logistics in course registration.
This past fall I took a personal education course called, «Thinking on Your Feet.» It was taught by an improv comedian who trained with Tina Fey, and she’s been teaching this course for around 5 years. It was a safe and friendly environment where a really diverse group of folks from all backgrounds and careers joined together with the same goal of trying to be wittier and build confidence in verbal fencing.
We really just played lots of games to work on different aspects of our lateral thinking. By the end, a few of us were actually meeting outside of class to discuss how to take this class and turn it into something bigger like Toastmasters.
The things I liked most about the class:
— It was new EVERY week and I felt nervous and excited to go.
— I got to know a lot of people and test myself in a lot of different types of situations
— it was really fast-​paced and perfect for my ADD personality
— You really get out what you put in
— The instructor creates a very supportive environment

GSCS does a great job as far as offering much needed certification programs for professional development. I am in their Nonprofit Finance Certificate Program and it is magnificent despite it being the first time they offer it. It is so well organized and structured in a way that it is truly beneficial for the students and the organizations represented. The professors are top-​notch as well as the material and projects.
They are also very friendly as far as providing quality (and yummy!) food for breakfast, lunches and receptions.

The Glasscock School of Continuing Studies offers a variety of Professional Development and Foreign Language courses. I took two levels of Portuguese there last year. It’s actually my first language, as it was always spoken at home along with English, but when I started Kindergarten I spoke English only from that point forward. I took on this bad habit that many Americans with two-​language households do — I respond to my parents in English while they talk to me in Portuguese. My job has me doing some International projects, mostly in Brazil. Having no formal training in the language, I quickly realized I needed to find a solution. Writing emails on a six-​year old illiterate child level (barely with the use of Babelfish) certainly isn’t a respectable way of conducting business. Fortunately, for me, I learned that Rice was offering Portuguese for the first time starting in Spring 2009.
Classes met twice a week for one and a half hours and were lead by a native speaker. What I liked is that although she was Brazilian, she did teach all the different dialects (Portugal, Mozambique, Angola) so as to suit the needs of everyone in the class. The classroom was small and, at the most, had 12 students. There were people in the oil industry, a lawyer who worked at the Portuguese Consulate, worldly linguists, and those planning trips to Brazil or Portugal in the near future.
I wouldn’t recommend taking language courses here if you have never had any type of exposure to the language you’re studying and/​or this is your first time ever learning a second language. Maybe it’s just because Portuguese is such a difficult language to learn (the grammar is insane) but a lot of people who were taking it for the first time didn’t last after a few weeks. Just because it’s noncredit doesn’t mean you won’t have to study and do the assignments. Like any other course, you’ll take whatever you put into it. Those that had some conversational exposure to Portuguese or who previously studied Spanish, French, or Italian did do well.
Parking is included in the course fees. On the first day of class, you’ll get a parking tag that will let you park in the stadium lot. In the springtime, you’ll need to get there early if there’s a baseball game that night.