The Department of World Languages and Literatures has decided to re-institute ACCENTS!, our newsletter. As the new department chair, I want to bring you up to date on the work of the department, and to share with you some of the visions for the future. In the last years we have added several new languages to our regular offerings: American Sign Language, Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Luiseño, and Serrano (Native American languages). This year we have two visiting Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistants, one from Russia and another from Brazil. After six years of a very successful Arabic Intensive Summer Program, we have added Chinese (Mandarin), Korean and Persian. This is the 7th year of the M.A. program in Spanish, and last fall term we saw the first Spanish Teaching Assistants in the classroom.