Bilingual & Multicultural Education (BME)

Specialize your education degree at NAU with BME opportunities

The reality of today’s classroom is a diverse one. Specialization in bilingual and multicultural education is very applicable to meeting the needs of students from a variety of cultures and backgrounds.

This program meets a growing need for highly qualified ESL and bilingual teachers in Arizona, and was designed to meet the requirements of the Arizona Department of Education for an ESL endorsement which went into effect in 1984.

We offer the following Bilingual and Multicultural degrees, certificates, and endorsements:

Degrees

Master of Education in Bilingual and Multicultural Education with two emphases:

• Bilingual and Multicultural Education – Bilingual Emphasis, Master of Education
• Bilingual and Multicultural Education – ESL Emphasis, Master of Education

Certificates

• English as a Second Language, Undergraduate Certificate
• English as a Second Language, Graduate Certificate

Endorsements

• English as a Second Language Endorsement – Arizona Department of Education, Endorsement
• Bilingual Endorsement – Arizona Department of Education, Endorsement

Admission information

• Have completed a bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution
• Be admitted to the university’s Office of Graduate and Professional Studies
• Have a minimum grade point average of 3.0 (B) in your undergraduate program of study (some programs will also review your first 9 hours of graduate coursework to verify the 3.0 grade point average in lieu of an overall 3.0 in your undergraduate degree)
• Complete a program of studies form with one of our graduate advisers and submit it to our department office
• Demonstrate at least intermediate proficiency in a second language by receiving a passing score on the Spanish proficiency examination or Navajo oral proficiency examination.
• If you are a member of a Native American tribe other than Navajo, you may have tribal officials provide a letter documenting your proficiency in your particular language. You may also use academic records as evidence; for example, you might have an undergraduate major in Spanish and experience teaching Spanish in the secondary schools.
• If you are an international student whose second language is English, you must earn a minimum score of 550 on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL).