When Dr. D. Brian Mann arrived at the University of North Georgia (UNG) in 1999, he was hired as an assistant professor of French.
After five years, Mann was promoted to associate professor and earned his tenure. When the chair of the Department of Language and Literature stepped down in spring 2005, he was asked to become interim department head.
"I wasn't interested," Mann said. "But after the first of May, the outgoing department head and Dr. Chris Jespersen, who was interim dean, said that they needed me to do this."
Mann agreed with one caveat. He wanted to separate the department into English and modern languages. Jespersen supported the idea. Together, they and others spent a year forming two new departments.
In fall 2006, the two new departments were established. Mann went from interim department head of Language and Literature to head of the new Department of Modern Languages, with seven faculty who taught the three languages of Spanish, French and German.
Since then, he has methodically increased his department. By 2012, UNG had Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and Russian. The languages of Italian, Japanese and Latin were added to the department thanks to the 2013 consolidation that formed UNG.
The influx of seven new languages and accompanying faculty members plus the consolidation led to formation of two departments: Department of Modern and Classical Languages and the Department of Spanish & Portuguese.
In 2017, Farsi was added to modern and classical languages department and Portuguese in the Spanish department. Now, UNG teaches 12 languages with nearly 70 faculty, which bucks the current trend of dwindling foreign language departments.
Mann also guided the creation of the Summer Language Institute in 2008 and the Chinese Language Flagship program in 2011. He credits faculty, the Center for Global Engagement (CGE), the Corps of Cadets, the Department of Military Science, and UNG's administration with both programs' and the departments' success.
"I would love to say that I did it. But I have to take the 'I' out," he said. "It's the students who drive the bus. They wanted to study these languages and responded to our quality instructors."
Establishing the study abroad programs also turned Mann into a world traveler. He has been to Mexico and France, of course, but also Latvia, Siberia, North Africa, Oman and the Middle East.
"Those are opportunities that presented themselves," he said. "I got to see a lot of the world for the sake of the students."
