The breakup of the Department of Romance and Classical Languages was approved 7-1 at the MSU Board of Trustees meeting Wednesday.
Trustee Donald Nugent voted against the proposal saying the project should be delayed for one year until the proposed $5-million state-funding cut can be resolved.
The split restructures the current program into two new departments: one comprised of Spanish and Portuguese and the other of French, Italian and classical languages.
MSU President M. Peter McPherson believes the reorganization will allow the Spanish program to flourish.
"Throughout the country there is more and more demand for Spanish at universities and colleges," he said. "And it is because there is a larger, growing number of people with a Hispanic heritage."
Provost Lou Anna Simon said the two separate departments should not put extra pressure on the College of Arts and Letters to meet its proposed reduction plans of 3 , 5 and 7 percent.
"I recognize that many might share the feelings that we should wait because of the difficulty of the budget circumstances," Simon said. "But the college has developed a budget reduction plan that permits it to internally allocate resources for this priority project."
The two separate department chairs will remain in the same building and faculty will keep their same offices, Dean Wendy Wilkins said.
"The destinies will be separated," Wilkins said. "We will be able to encourage Spanish to directly respond to the growing student need, not having to worry that their expansion will snuff out the smaller languages.
Wilkins said there's a high demand for the Spanish program.
"Spanish is rapidly becoming not a foreign language in the United States," she said. "More and more students are coming to the university with a Spanish language context that many of them realize will make them move faster."
Trustee Dorothy Gonzales, who speaks Spanish, said the program will promote the languages and enhance students' abilities to think and to communicate with others.
"Everyone that can speak or read and write in two different languages has such a plus," Gonzales said.
"And now that we are becoming a more global and more multicultural society we needed to do that."
The board also approved renovation plans for Marshall Hall and discussed possible improvements to Spartan Stadium.
