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Timeline
➢    LFRC established 1985
➢    LFRC redesigned in 1991
➢    LFRC merged w/LLA in 1996 (see LA website for history of LLA)
➢    LFRC/LLA became CSL/LA in 2006
➢    CSL moved into redesigned offices on 2nd fl. Cobb Hall in Jan 2007.

In 1984 the language-teaching faculty of the University of Chicago expressed their dissatisfaction with the lack of facilities and equipment for their specialized needs. Late in the year an "Audio-Visual Resource Committee", chaired by Carolyn Killean (Associate Professor in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations), began deliberations concerning an "audio-visual center" to be located in Cobb Hall, the center of undergraduate teaching. The new center, named the Language Faculty Resource Center (LFRC), opened for business in May 1985, with Carolyn Killean serving as its first academic director. At first, the center occupied just two rooms on the second floor of Cobb Hall, and provided language instructors with two computers, a slide projector, a video camera and videocassette recorders capable of showing tapes in various formats and standards (including foreign ones).
In 1990 plans for building a Film Center required extensive renovation of Cobb Hall, and as a result more room became available for a more spacious LFRC. During the Fall Quarter of 1990 the Pew Charitable Trusts granted the LFRC $450,000 to create a new facility, which began operations at the beginning of 1992. The new LFRC provided language instructors (and other faculty) with a multimedia classroom, a video production studio, and a satellite TV viewing room, in addition to the media carts, computers and a photocopier it has provided from its earliest days.
From its inception the LFRC also encouraged and supported innumerable projects to improve the teaching of foreign languages. Thanks in particular to the Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning (founded in 1986), funding for these projects has been readily forthcoming. So far, course materials have been developed in audio, video and computer formats in such diverse languages as French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Marathi, Tibetan and Hindi.

Ms. Killean proposed to retire from teaching at the end of the 1995-96 academic year. The time was ripe, therefore, for the LLA and the LFRC to be merged, since they had overlapping constituencies (the language faculty) and complementary facilities for language learning, course development and linguistic research. The merger became official on April 1, 1996, and Karen Landahl assumed the directorship of the combined entity. The name "Language Laboratories and Archives" was retained as an umbrella designation for the two sites combined. As a practical matter, the designation "Language Faculty Resource Center" stayed, while the former LLA took on a new title as the "Social Science site".

The current Center for the Study of Language under academic director Steven Clancy was launched in September 2006, and with the help of a $1.8 million dollar grant from the Provost’s Office, its new facilities became fully functional on the 2nd floor of Cobb Hall in January 2007. It was designed by RADA Architects, Ltd., and it consolidates many of the functions of the former Language Faculty Resource Center and the Language Labs and Archives. The CSL has equipment and classrooms to meet the needs of today’s students and teachers. It can host videoconferences, provides satellite TV broadcasts of foreign news entertainment programs, and can match class size and classroom because of the range fo available classrooms: from small café-style booths for small groups, to large seminar classrooms, all provided with the latest AV equipment