Languages have been an integral part of Elena Past’s life, guiding her upbringing, education and eventual career in higher education. Now, as the incoming chair for the Department of French and Italian, Past is excited to bring her passion for languages and environmental sustainability to Ohio State’s College of Arts and Sciences.

“I've known about the language programs at Ohio State throughout my career,” she said. “There are colleagues here who I greatly respect, and I love the creativity of the PhD program in Italian. It's interdisciplinary and forward-thinking, so it's a place I've long admired.”

Past arrives at Ohio State after serving as interim and associate dean of the Irvin D. Reid Honors College at Wayne State University in Detroit, which she joined in 2006. She was also a professor of Italian, collaborated with the Office of Campus Sustainability, and taught courses in Italian literature, film and culture as well as in the environmental humanities.

“I've loved my role at Wayne State where I have been committed to public education in urban settings,” she said. “I feel like that's where the future of higher education needs to be. There's so much that you can actively experience while learning in cities like Detroit and Columbus.”

Past, whose parents were both language teachers, learned both English and Spanish at a young age. But growing up in a small town in Texas, she also felt an urgency to explore the world and see new places, with the study of languages serving as an opportunity.

As a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin, she enrolled in an Italian class and fell in love with the language. She set her sights on studying abroad, eventually traveling to Siena, Italy, where she conducted research and completed her senior thesis. This set the groundwork for her eventual doctoral studies in Italian at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I realized in my role in the Honors College at Wayne State, which is a deeply interdisciplinary curriculum, that there are a million different ways that people can think about expanding their horizons,” she said. “You don’t have to travel the world. You can explore molecules under a microscope. But for me, the answer was to move across borders and see new landscapes and learn new languages. I love thinking about the world with new words and through the lens of other cultures.”

Ohio State offers courses in more than 30 languages, several with dedicated majors, minors and departments, with the university recently receiving a grant from the Mellon Foundation that will expand investment in language education.

“Transforming language education in Ohio—it’s such a special thing that the university is committing to,” Past said. “It's a wonderful opportunity to show how language education matters, both because it globalizes and also ties you to your local communities. I'm so honored to join Ohio State as this initiative launches.”

The College of Arts and Sciences will also host the inaugural Love of Languages 5K/Walk on Sept. 20, bringing together runners, students and educators to advocate for learning languages. That support of language education – from the words themselves to the culture surrounding them – has been at the crux of Past’s career in higher education, where she has long advocated for the practical value of a language-based education.

“Languages help students get jobs because they give them skills which are not simply linguistic but cultural,” she said. “They give them access to conversations in global corporations and organizations and an ability to navigate those with cultural sensitivity. These practical skills are really important right now.”

Past also has a particular passion for Italian cinema, seeing it as a way for viewers to exercise creativity and experience the world through someone else’s lens.

“Creative and aesthetic tools can be helpful in daily life, which requires a lot of creativity as we're learning how to value the human brain and human capabilities in the AI age,” she said. “Languages have ways of showing us things that make us uniquely capable of navigating a world that is deeply hybrid.”

Past saw that same commitment she has to languages at Ohio State, in the College of Arts and Sciences and within the Department of French and Italian, making it an easy decision to take on this new role.

“I can't imagine anything more exciting than getting to work to promote the importance of global language education at a place where you have such a wealth of perspectives, of commitment, and intellectual resources,” she said. “I just can't imagine what you wouldn't be able to find here, and that's so exciting to me.”