Michele Back was reappointed after a third year review in 2017 and just finished her third year at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education, having taken one year credit from her previous appointment at George Mason University. She is the busiest she has ever been in her life: teaching two summer courses; advising eleven teacher candidates in Spanish and French; preparing eight elementary teacher candidates to study abroad in Cusco, Peru; conducting professional development for current world language teachers; and, last but not least, working on two articles, three chapters, one book, and two other studies that are in various data collection and proposal phases. She is enjoying Eastern Connecticut flora and fauna as well as other Northeastern U.S. phenomena such as lacrosse and really, really old towns.
Carolina Bernales is currently a tenure-track assistant professor and Research Director in the Literature and Language Science Institute at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses and advises graduate students. Next semester, she will offer a new graduate course in methods in applied English linguistics, in which she hopes to also share her research and experience doing eye-tracking research. She enjoys her service as editorial board member (SLA strand) in the Chilean journal Revista Signos: Estudios de Lingüistica (WoS), and she is very excited to have recently joined the AAAL Mentoring Diversity Committee chaired by fellow UW SLA Program alum Peter De Costa. She was thrilled to see many ‘old’ SLA faces at AAAL-Chicago this year!
Barbara Bird has been exploring Project Based Language Learning and presented on a board game project in a National Foreign Language Resource Center webinar. She has been teaching 5-6 courses/semester at the College of Southern Nevada, including online courses, which keeps her busy. She recently completed a Certificate in Online Teaching and is currently revising her introductory online class. She presents regularly at ACTFL and is involved with her state language association, the Professional Language Association of Neveda. This summer’s travel destinations include Stockholm, Sicily, Zurich, Munich, Lisbon, Lithuania, and Georgia.
Peter De Costa, assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics, Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages at Michigan State University, was appointed co-editor of TESOL Quarterly.
Isabelle Drewelow earned tenure at the University of Alabama in Spring 2017… and celebrated all summer. Since then, she published two articles, one in The Language Learning Journal and one in the 2017 Volume of the American Association of University Supervisors and Coordinators. Both articles focus on the development of intercultural empathy at the intermediate level but in different languages (Spanish and French). She graduated another PhD this May. Isabelle is excited for her upcoming sabbatical in Spring 2019. She will use the time to develop publications based on data collected on an experiential global simulation she created for a language for specific purpose course.
Paula Garrett-Rucks was promoted and tenured at Georgia State University in May 2017. She continues her work in World Language Teacher Preparation and French. She played an active role in ACTFL as the Teaching and Learning of Cultures Special Interest Group Secretary and Chair and was awarded the 2016 Nelson Brooks Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Culture for her book, Intercultural competence in instructed language learning: Bridging theory and practice (2016). She continues an active role professional world language teaching organizations and has served has Editor of the Southern Conference on Language Teaching Dimensions Journal since 2015. She enjoys supporting K-12 world language education and Dual Language Immersion in Atlanta and looking forward to teaching French in Angers during the summer. Now tenured, she hopes to spend a little more time with her family–her two daughters, husband, and mother, aka Grandma Mary, who all live in the Atlanta area.
Shenika Harris has been enjoying her fourth year at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri. In the fall of 2017, she designed the first online language course at her university, and she designed a second online language course in 2018. During the 2018-2019 academic year, she will conduct research on the effect of course format, face-to-face or online, on language acquisition at the novice level. She will present preliminary results at ACTFL’s 2018 Annual Convention and World Languages Expo in New Orleans. Also, she is enjoying her third year as editor of the feature article “Readings on L2 Reading: Publications in Other Venues,” which is published every November in Reading in a Foreign Language. This summer, she hopes to make some minor home improvements and continue researching translanguaging during the foreign language writing process.
Atsushi Hasegawa was on a fourth-year course release (pre-tenure) from his position at the University of Kentucky and spent the fall semester in Japan as a visiting scholar at Yokohama National University. While in Japan, he worked on his monograph, titled The Social Lives of Study Abroad: Understanding Interpersonal Relationships, Social Interaction, and Language Development in the Second Language Learner Experience, which is scheduled to be published by Routledge in 2019. This past year, Atsushi had three publications:
Hasegawa, A. (2018). Understanding task-in-process through the lens of laughter: Activity designs, instructional materials, learner orientations, and interpersonal relationships. The Modern Language Journal, 102(1), 142-161.
Hasegawa, A. (2017). Collaborative orientation to the ‘search for what to say’ in pair work interactions. In Greer, T., Ishida, M., & Tateyama, Y. (Eds.), Interactional competence in Japanese as an additional language (pp. 175-210). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i, National Foreign Language Resource Center.
Sato, S., Hasegawa, A., Kumagai, Y, & Kamiyoshi, U. (2017). Content-based instruction for the social future: A recommendation for critical content-based instruction (CCBI). L2 Journal, 9(3), 50-69.
Nelly Martin-Anatias is a research fellow at Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, in the Institute of Culture, Discourse, and Communication. She published the article “Bahasa gado‐gado: English in Indonesian popular texts” in the May 2018 issue of World Englishes.
Margaret Merrill continues to enjoy her work as an instructional designer and educational technologist in Academic Technology Services at the University of California, Davis. Her team launched their biggest online course yet this past year and Margaret is really proud of their work on that project. In addition to her general work in supporting faculty across campus with their pedagogical and technology challenges, Margaret has been supporting online exam proctoring in a few courses as the university tests out an online proctoring service, and was part of a team that did a diversity and inclusion multimedia project called “ShareYou”. Margaret has been working recently on a hybrid Spanish language course, and has enjoyed working on language instruction again! She is part of a group of instructional designers and faculty support personnel throughout the University of California system that is working to learn from each other and potentially standardize some instructional design practices. She really enjoyed seeing so many alumni and staff and students at the SLA dinner at AAAL in Chicago!
Sandra Elena Terra has been enjoying her second year at Linfield College as an Assistant Professor of Spanish. This year, she published an article in the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism based on her dissertation research titled Bilingual Education in Mozambique: A case-study on educational policy, teacher beliefs, and implemented practices. She continues to work on the board for Confederation in Oregon for Language Teaching as post-secondary representative and will be hosting once again a spring conference in her college this upcoming year. She is in the last stages of ACTFL’s Full Oral Proficiency Interview Tester Certification and plans to use this tool in program assessment and evaluation. Furthermore, Sandra Elena put together a new study abroad program in Chillán, Chile for her college. For the upcoming year, they will be sending a trial group of students. Lastly, her family has welcomed a wonderful addition: Marcelo Rafael was born in March and is filling their hearts with joy.
Robin Worth continues her work as a principal investigator at the Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative in UW’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research. She works with clients such as the WI Department of Public Instruction and various school districts around the state to help them make data-informed decisions about programming, curricula, policies and other matters. She regularly presents at conferences around Wisconsin and the US about education evaluation and best practices. In her spare time, she and her partner Pete like to travel, play golf, and play guitars and sing at clubs and festivals.