BMCC Offers Spanish Courses to IRS Employees Onsite at the MetroTech Office January 16, 2003
Borough of Manhattan Community College is offering Spanish courses to employees of the Internal Revenue Service this semester at the IRS office in the Metro Tech Center in downtown Brooklyn. The IRS now offers a financial incentive to employees who speak Spanish, and the National Treasury Union will pay tuition and fees for most of the students who enroll in the onsite Spanish course.
The IRS employees will take the regular Spanish 101 course, use the same textbook, and follow the same semester schedule as other BMCC credit-bearing students. IRS and BMCC staff worked to outfit a computer lab in the IRS offices with materials for a Spanish language lab.
However, IRS employees are also learning Spanish tailored to their job. The instructor, Nilsa Ruiz, integrates material and vocabulary from the IRS into the curriculum, including a number of real-life case studies, so students can simulate real-life interactions with IRS clients in Spanish. “This marks the first time that the IRS has turned to a community college to offer an onsite language class to its employees,” noted Sandra Rumayor, director of outreach programs.
For the past three years, Rumayor has arranged for BMCC to offer accounting courses to IRS employees onsite in the Brooklyn and Manhattan IRS offices. Several years ago, the IRS passed a regulation requiring all of its employees at a certain level to take at least 12 credits of accounting courses if they did not already possess a college degree. The experience of the IRS employees with the BMCC courses has been so positive that Rumayor reports, “We have one group of IRS employees that has taken the four required accounting courses and now is taking a fifth course in cost accounting. The whole cohort has stayed together from the beginning,” she said. Rumayor gives the employees some additional services, such as help with the application process. “The registrar, bursar, and admissions staff all work together to smooth the way for these employees to enroll and make this program possible,” Rumayor said.
Because a successful partnership was already in place, the Brooklyn IRS office turned to BMCC seeking a Spanish course for its employees onsite. The National Treasury Union Chapter 271 will pay for employees to take the course. “I think BMCC is wonderful,” said Jorge Diaz, union representative. Although there is a heavy demand for the course, enrollment will be limited to 20 students this spring. ‘In the fall, we hope to offer Spanish 102 for the continuing students and another section of Spanish 101 for new students,” Rumayor said.
