Research Statement & Teaching Philosophy
My research focuses on the role of technology and language learning, with a range from Virtual Worlds and language learning, to telecollaboration, to high immersion Virtual Reality in that process. As one might imagine, the status of what might be the ‘cutting edge’ of research in this field has advanced considerably since that time as has my own focus with that area (my early exploration in this area used MOOs and then Yahoo text-based Messenger). My research since 2004 has evolved across the four following areas and my current research focus is ‘at the edge’ of the field:
My research in these areas has led to well over fifty invited presentations at various conferences and in locations around the world, and my work has also appeared in the top-ranked journal in my fields, including Computers & Education, CALICO Journal, ReCALL, Language Learning & Technology, ELT Journal, the Journal of English for Academic Purposes, and others. In addition, my visibility in this arena has led to sixteen invited book chapters. Finally, in addition to my single-authored book discussed below, I also have two recent edited volumes, one from TESOL Press and the other with Wiley Blackwell, and have co-edited two special issues in top journals.
ESL Writing/Writing and Technology
One portion of my research has focused on the experiences of ESL writers in U.S. university environments. This began with my Dissertation, A case study examination of international and resident non-native speakers of English in freshman English composition, which provided the first truly comprehensive survey of writing courses offered by a university in the U.S. and the ESL student experience in those courses. It also provided a unique perspective on the experiences of Spanish speakers at that university, finding that they were divided into three orientations: those U.S.-focused, those Mexico-focused, and those with a cross-border orientation. While the attention of this research was not on how technology was being used in the classroom, it became apparent to me that the teachers involved were making use of technology in many different ways, ranging from not at all, to including it as an integral part of their course. This observation inspired me to the new areas of research that have been my focus here at Illinois.
In parallel with this research, I conducted a study which examined the role of peer review in electronic versus traditional modes on the revisions made by ESL students. This research, co-authored with Dr. Jun Liu at the University of Arizona, was published in the Journal of English for Academic Purposes. This was one of the first studies that examined the influence of technology on peer review that included both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies.
Virtual Worlds and Language Learning
My research concentration on Virtual Worlds began shortly after I became an Assistant Professor at Illinois. I was asked to create a new course with a focus on technology and language learning (EIL 587) and while putting together the materials for that class I stumbled onto a program called Second Life and the active community there focused both on education in general and specifically on language teaching. This community led me to making long-lasting connections to colleagues from the Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO), the European Association of Computer Assisted Language Learning (EUROCALL), and others across the globe.
My book on this topic, Virtual Worlds and Language Learning: From Theory to Practice, was published by Peter Lang in 2012 and was very well received in the VW research community. In addition, I have published in this area in Bellaterra Journal of Teaching & Learning, Language & Literature; ReCALL; Language Learning & Technology; and the ELT Journal. I have also published on this topic in a number of edited volumes with publishers including IALLT, Continuum, Routledge, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, and Peter Lang. Finally, my work in this area led to an invitation to co-edit a special issue of ReCALL Journal titled Interactions for language learning in and around virtual worlds. I have been invited to speak on this topic at conventions and workshops around the world and also been asked to join Dissertation committees for this expertise at a number of universities in the U.S. and abroad.
My work in this area led to the creation of Virtual Worlds SIGs for both CALICO and EUROCALL and (as noted in section IIG above), my design and implementation of a number of ‘creative works’ connected to this field. These include the development of The EduNation Islands in Second Life, which are focused on language teaching in VWs, in addition to a number of custom-created support elements that I designed for those islands. These include a holodeck with more than one hundred different immersive 3D scenes for education (e.g., classrooms, shops, restaurants, starships); a communication HUD that provides users with a virtual world heads-up display interface designed to ease non-verbal communication for avatars via integrated emojis, expressions, and movements; over ten unique conference venues (with seating for up to 100 avatars); and (most recently) The Renoir Sky Gallery (a 3D virtual art gallery housing rotating art exhibits for educational use).
Telecollaboration and Teacher Education
In addition to my work in Virtual Worlds, I also have performed research into the wider area of Computer-Mediated Communication as it relates to Telecollaboration. This work began in my first semester as an Assistant Professor at Illinois when, in the EIL 587 course described above, I first invited Dr. Melinda Dooly from the Autonomous University Barcelona to work on a course together. Beginning that year, and continuing on until today, we combine our courses each fall and have our students (all current or future language teachers) telecollaborate to both explore technologies for language teaching and also to work together to create technology-infused teaching units. Our work in this area was first published in the paper Computer-mediated communication and a cautionary tale of two cities, published in CALICO Journal. In addition to many invited and refereed presentations in the U.S. and abroad, my work in this area has lead to publications in journals including ReCALL, Language Learning & Technology, ELT Journal, and IALLT. It has also resulted in chapters in edited volumes from publishers including Routledge, Wiley-Blackwell, Paragon, and Springer. This very productive collaboration has resulted in a number of our students going on to teach language courses where they have integrated such technologies and telecollaboration into their own classes. In fact, the research currently underway (described just below) takes place in the classroom of a current sixth grade teacher located in a suburb of Barcelona, Spain who took our course several years ago.
Virtual Reality and Language Learning
My newest area of research, and the one that I plan to continue exploring going forward, focuses on the effect of high immersion virtual reality (in this case via the use of Oculus Quest 2 VR headsets) on language learning. I am currently writing up the results of co-research performed with a PhD student from the Department of French in our School, Tricia Thrasher, which asked our participants (all current or future language teachers) to examine seven current VR environments and judge their potential for language teaching across a number of factors. The participants evaluated each environment across thirty-six different factors ranging from ease of use, the ability to interact in the setting, problems with motion sickness, etc. This manuscript will be submitted within one month for consideration for publication.
We are also just finishing up with data collection on a second project in this area using an existing VR platform called Immerse. This VR environment is the first that has been specifically designed for the teaching of English to speakers of other languages where the students are acting with their teacher in a range of environments (e.g., airport security, a café, a classroom, etc.) rather than having the students interact with a computer via VR. For this project, we recruited a class of very active 6th grade learners of English located in a suburb of Barcelona, Spain to be our students for seven weeks. In addition to pre, mid, and posttests, we have recorded our interactions with the students from the perspectives of the teacher interface (via a PC), the VR headset (via an integrated recording tool), and the classroom in Spain. As one might imagine, this study is giving us a great deal of data and we believe that this will result in multiple publications in top ranked journals. Moving beyond this study, we plan to do a follow-up in the next academic year to work with students at this grade level once again over the entirety of the semester or, depending on the generosity of the participating teacher, the full year.
My work in this area has also led to my co-researcher (Tricia Thrasher) and I being asked to work on a special issue of CALICO Journal that will be published in February, 2023, titled XR: Crossing Reality to Enhance Language Learning. The XR (Extended Reality) focus, includes papers on low and high immersion VR and also research examining the roles of augmented (AR) and mixed reality (MR) on language learning. We have already collected the papers for this special issue and they are currently undergoing double-blind peer review. This will be the first issue of this nature to appear in the CALL field, so we expect to have a strong impact going forward.
Looking ahead, I will spend the next academic year putting together a proposal for an NSF grant so that I can work with a team to design an open access VR setting for language teaching that will be modifiable by the teachers who use it, both in terms of the items within the setting and also so that it may be used across different languages. The lessons that I’ve learned from my almost 20 years working on low and high immersion VR will help me to create spaces that will be of high pedagogical value to educator and sites for rich research opportunities.
In sum, in my research I have sought to build and maintain an active national and international reputation in the related fields of Virtual Worlds and language learning, telecollaboration and language teaching and VR and language learning. It is my hope to continue making significant contributions to research and practice in these fields in the future.
- ESL/EFL Writing and the role of technology in that process;
- the role of Virtual Worlds (low immersion virtual reality) in language education;
- telecollaboration, language teaching, and teacher education;
- Virtual Reality (high immersion VR) and language learning.
My research in these areas has led to well over fifty invited presentations at various conferences and in locations around the world, and my work has also appeared in the top-ranked journal in my fields, including Computers & Education, CALICO Journal, ReCALL, Language Learning & Technology, ELT Journal, the Journal of English for Academic Purposes, and others. In addition, my visibility in this arena has led to sixteen invited book chapters. Finally, in addition to my single-authored book discussed below, I also have two recent edited volumes, one from TESOL Press and the other with Wiley Blackwell, and have co-edited two special issues in top journals.
ESL Writing/Writing and Technology
One portion of my research has focused on the experiences of ESL writers in U.S. university environments. This began with my Dissertation, A case study examination of international and resident non-native speakers of English in freshman English composition, which provided the first truly comprehensive survey of writing courses offered by a university in the U.S. and the ESL student experience in those courses. It also provided a unique perspective on the experiences of Spanish speakers at that university, finding that they were divided into three orientations: those U.S.-focused, those Mexico-focused, and those with a cross-border orientation. While the attention of this research was not on how technology was being used in the classroom, it became apparent to me that the teachers involved were making use of technology in many different ways, ranging from not at all, to including it as an integral part of their course. This observation inspired me to the new areas of research that have been my focus here at Illinois.
In parallel with this research, I conducted a study which examined the role of peer review in electronic versus traditional modes on the revisions made by ESL students. This research, co-authored with Dr. Jun Liu at the University of Arizona, was published in the Journal of English for Academic Purposes. This was one of the first studies that examined the influence of technology on peer review that included both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies.
Virtual Worlds and Language Learning
My research concentration on Virtual Worlds began shortly after I became an Assistant Professor at Illinois. I was asked to create a new course with a focus on technology and language learning (EIL 587) and while putting together the materials for that class I stumbled onto a program called Second Life and the active community there focused both on education in general and specifically on language teaching. This community led me to making long-lasting connections to colleagues from the Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO), the European Association of Computer Assisted Language Learning (EUROCALL), and others across the globe.
My book on this topic, Virtual Worlds and Language Learning: From Theory to Practice, was published by Peter Lang in 2012 and was very well received in the VW research community. In addition, I have published in this area in Bellaterra Journal of Teaching & Learning, Language & Literature; ReCALL; Language Learning & Technology; and the ELT Journal. I have also published on this topic in a number of edited volumes with publishers including IALLT, Continuum, Routledge, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, and Peter Lang. Finally, my work in this area led to an invitation to co-edit a special issue of ReCALL Journal titled Interactions for language learning in and around virtual worlds. I have been invited to speak on this topic at conventions and workshops around the world and also been asked to join Dissertation committees for this expertise at a number of universities in the U.S. and abroad.
My work in this area led to the creation of Virtual Worlds SIGs for both CALICO and EUROCALL and (as noted in section IIG above), my design and implementation of a number of ‘creative works’ connected to this field. These include the development of The EduNation Islands in Second Life, which are focused on language teaching in VWs, in addition to a number of custom-created support elements that I designed for those islands. These include a holodeck with more than one hundred different immersive 3D scenes for education (e.g., classrooms, shops, restaurants, starships); a communication HUD that provides users with a virtual world heads-up display interface designed to ease non-verbal communication for avatars via integrated emojis, expressions, and movements; over ten unique conference venues (with seating for up to 100 avatars); and (most recently) The Renoir Sky Gallery (a 3D virtual art gallery housing rotating art exhibits for educational use).
Telecollaboration and Teacher Education
In addition to my work in Virtual Worlds, I also have performed research into the wider area of Computer-Mediated Communication as it relates to Telecollaboration. This work began in my first semester as an Assistant Professor at Illinois when, in the EIL 587 course described above, I first invited Dr. Melinda Dooly from the Autonomous University Barcelona to work on a course together. Beginning that year, and continuing on until today, we combine our courses each fall and have our students (all current or future language teachers) telecollaborate to both explore technologies for language teaching and also to work together to create technology-infused teaching units. Our work in this area was first published in the paper Computer-mediated communication and a cautionary tale of two cities, published in CALICO Journal. In addition to many invited and refereed presentations in the U.S. and abroad, my work in this area has lead to publications in journals including ReCALL, Language Learning & Technology, ELT Journal, and IALLT. It has also resulted in chapters in edited volumes from publishers including Routledge, Wiley-Blackwell, Paragon, and Springer. This very productive collaboration has resulted in a number of our students going on to teach language courses where they have integrated such technologies and telecollaboration into their own classes. In fact, the research currently underway (described just below) takes place in the classroom of a current sixth grade teacher located in a suburb of Barcelona, Spain who took our course several years ago.
Virtual Reality and Language Learning
My newest area of research, and the one that I plan to continue exploring going forward, focuses on the effect of high immersion virtual reality (in this case via the use of Oculus Quest 2 VR headsets) on language learning. I am currently writing up the results of co-research performed with a PhD student from the Department of French in our School, Tricia Thrasher, which asked our participants (all current or future language teachers) to examine seven current VR environments and judge their potential for language teaching across a number of factors. The participants evaluated each environment across thirty-six different factors ranging from ease of use, the ability to interact in the setting, problems with motion sickness, etc. This manuscript will be submitted within one month for consideration for publication.
We are also just finishing up with data collection on a second project in this area using an existing VR platform called Immerse. This VR environment is the first that has been specifically designed for the teaching of English to speakers of other languages where the students are acting with their teacher in a range of environments (e.g., airport security, a café, a classroom, etc.) rather than having the students interact with a computer via VR. For this project, we recruited a class of very active 6th grade learners of English located in a suburb of Barcelona, Spain to be our students for seven weeks. In addition to pre, mid, and posttests, we have recorded our interactions with the students from the perspectives of the teacher interface (via a PC), the VR headset (via an integrated recording tool), and the classroom in Spain. As one might imagine, this study is giving us a great deal of data and we believe that this will result in multiple publications in top ranked journals. Moving beyond this study, we plan to do a follow-up in the next academic year to work with students at this grade level once again over the entirety of the semester or, depending on the generosity of the participating teacher, the full year.
My work in this area has also led to my co-researcher (Tricia Thrasher) and I being asked to work on a special issue of CALICO Journal that will be published in February, 2023, titled XR: Crossing Reality to Enhance Language Learning. The XR (Extended Reality) focus, includes papers on low and high immersion VR and also research examining the roles of augmented (AR) and mixed reality (MR) on language learning. We have already collected the papers for this special issue and they are currently undergoing double-blind peer review. This will be the first issue of this nature to appear in the CALL field, so we expect to have a strong impact going forward.
Looking ahead, I will spend the next academic year putting together a proposal for an NSF grant so that I can work with a team to design an open access VR setting for language teaching that will be modifiable by the teachers who use it, both in terms of the items within the setting and also so that it may be used across different languages. The lessons that I’ve learned from my almost 20 years working on low and high immersion VR will help me to create spaces that will be of high pedagogical value to educator and sites for rich research opportunities.
In sum, in my research I have sought to build and maintain an active national and international reputation in the related fields of Virtual Worlds and language learning, telecollaboration and language teaching and VR and language learning. It is my hope to continue making significant contributions to research and practice in these fields in the future.
Teaching Philosophy
In the Classroom
Since I began teaching at the University of Illinois in 2004 in the Division of English as an International Language (DEIL), and continuing on through the merger with the Department of Linguistics to the present, I have taught a number of core and elective courses for the Department of Linguistics—including those in the MATESL and PhD programs. These include Teaching Second Language Reading & Writing, Technology for Language Teaching, Virtual Worlds for Language Teaching, Computer-Mediated Communication for Language Teaching, Technology-Infused Language Teaching, and Theoretical Foundations in Second Language Acquisition. In addition, I have taught two courses aimed at advanced ESL students. The first, Advanced Academic Writing, is designed for graduate student who are working on a thesis, dissertation, or journal articles; the second, Advanced Presentation Skills, is designed to fulfil the needs of students who will be doing major presentations at conferences or in industry. Both of these courses make use of Contract Learning and also ask the students to do extensive analysis of works from their own fields.
With the exception of the last two courses described, my classes normally have a mix of students that range from Undergraduates to those working on their PhDs. For example, in my class this semester (Spring, 2022) focused on Teaching Second Language Reading & Writing, there are twenty-five students enrolled and fourteen are undergraduates. That group includes students from Anthropology, Communication, Psychology, Linguistics, Journalism, Instrumental Music, English, Italian, and Industrial Design, with many of them taking the course as part of one of our two minors in TESL. At the Graduate level, I have had students take my courses focused on technology and language learning from Departments including Linguistics, Spanish, French & Italian, Spanish & Portuguese, Slavic Languages and Literatures, Germanic Languages and Literatures, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Curriculum & Instruction, Educational Psychology, and more.
My goal in all my courses is for student to join the type of Community of Practice (CoP) described by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger in 1991. As summarized by Wenger, such a community consists of “groups of people who share a concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (emphasis added). I do this for several reasons. First, the students in my courses bring with them a diversity of experiences, linguistic backgrounds, nationalities, ethnicities, and more with them. In addition, I have students in my classes who come with no classroom teaching experience while others may come with decades. What they all share is a strong interest in being better language teachers. As they strive to become part of a community of practice focused on their common interests, they share their experience, ideas, innovations, and challenges on that topic. This idea moves beyond Lev Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, where the focus is on what someone might be capable of with the support of a more knowledgeable peer, to the notion that all members of a community may contribute to that practice.
In my own teaching, this notion is best illustrated via the course (Technology-Infused Language Teaching) I teach annually with my long-term research and teaching partner, Dr. Melinda Dooly, from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. In that course her students in Barcelona and my students here in Illinois cover the same course content and have the same major course assignments, all of which are worked on in groups that we create to include students from both countries. We make use of Project-Based Language Learning wherein we ask students to engage with real-world issues from the community of language teaching and create products that have an actual purpose in that community. Over the years, we have developed the F.I.T model for our courses, as seen in the figure below, whereby flipped materials, in-class materials, and telecollaboration all combine to create and reinforce a community of practice focused on language teaching.
Since I began teaching at the University of Illinois in 2004 in the Division of English as an International Language (DEIL), and continuing on through the merger with the Department of Linguistics to the present, I have taught a number of core and elective courses for the Department of Linguistics—including those in the MATESL and PhD programs. These include Teaching Second Language Reading & Writing, Technology for Language Teaching, Virtual Worlds for Language Teaching, Computer-Mediated Communication for Language Teaching, Technology-Infused Language Teaching, and Theoretical Foundations in Second Language Acquisition. In addition, I have taught two courses aimed at advanced ESL students. The first, Advanced Academic Writing, is designed for graduate student who are working on a thesis, dissertation, or journal articles; the second, Advanced Presentation Skills, is designed to fulfil the needs of students who will be doing major presentations at conferences or in industry. Both of these courses make use of Contract Learning and also ask the students to do extensive analysis of works from their own fields.
With the exception of the last two courses described, my classes normally have a mix of students that range from Undergraduates to those working on their PhDs. For example, in my class this semester (Spring, 2022) focused on Teaching Second Language Reading & Writing, there are twenty-five students enrolled and fourteen are undergraduates. That group includes students from Anthropology, Communication, Psychology, Linguistics, Journalism, Instrumental Music, English, Italian, and Industrial Design, with many of them taking the course as part of one of our two minors in TESL. At the Graduate level, I have had students take my courses focused on technology and language learning from Departments including Linguistics, Spanish, French & Italian, Spanish & Portuguese, Slavic Languages and Literatures, Germanic Languages and Literatures, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Curriculum & Instruction, Educational Psychology, and more.
My goal in all my courses is for student to join the type of Community of Practice (CoP) described by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger in 1991. As summarized by Wenger, such a community consists of “groups of people who share a concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (emphasis added). I do this for several reasons. First, the students in my courses bring with them a diversity of experiences, linguistic backgrounds, nationalities, ethnicities, and more with them. In addition, I have students in my classes who come with no classroom teaching experience while others may come with decades. What they all share is a strong interest in being better language teachers. As they strive to become part of a community of practice focused on their common interests, they share their experience, ideas, innovations, and challenges on that topic. This idea moves beyond Lev Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, where the focus is on what someone might be capable of with the support of a more knowledgeable peer, to the notion that all members of a community may contribute to that practice.
In my own teaching, this notion is best illustrated via the course (Technology-Infused Language Teaching) I teach annually with my long-term research and teaching partner, Dr. Melinda Dooly, from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. In that course her students in Barcelona and my students here in Illinois cover the same course content and have the same major course assignments, all of which are worked on in groups that we create to include students from both countries. We make use of Project-Based Language Learning wherein we ask students to engage with real-world issues from the community of language teaching and create products that have an actual purpose in that community. Over the years, we have developed the F.I.T model for our courses, as seen in the figure below, whereby flipped materials, in-class materials, and telecollaboration all combine to create and reinforce a community of practice focused on language teaching.
In this model, neither professor is the ‘sage on the stage’. Instead, we are members of the CoP who also help to guide the other members of that community to explore the topics and become more fully integrated community members.
As noted in the model, continuous peer assessment is part of the process—with the teacher for the course included amongst those ‘peers’. This enables changes in direction if needed and also allows the instructors to see what hidden skills participants may have that might let them make additional valuable contributions to the community.
Research as a CoP
I follow this same philosophy when I am supervising students working on independent studies, Theses, or Dissertations. Rather than simply telling such students what belongs in their thesis, I have them explore their potential topics by searching through the Proquest Theses and Dissertations database or our UIUC MATESL Library database. I ask them to first engage with the community by searching out examples in that database that have strong similarities with their own interests and to then skim a number of them to find ones that draw their attention. They then take a smaller sample and analyze them to see what chapters they contain, what sections are within those chapters, etc. They look for patterns that they find across the theses they analyzed or for unique elements that seemed especially pertinent to them. They present their findings on this to me so that we can discuss the expectations from the community of practice. In addition, I have any students for whom I am the Thesis Chair (anywhere from 4-10 students a semester) meet together to discuss their challenges, their discoveries, and their findings as a way to continue building their community.
Forming a CoP of Active Professionals
My roles as a professor (and member of the teaching community), research supervisor and program administrator are important, but I strongly believe that encouraging and mentoring the students outside of the classroom is equally important. Beginning in the fall of 2005, and on a yearly basis since that time, I have given workshops on writing conference proposals for students who have an interest in presenting at conferences connected to our CoP (e.g., the Conference on Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), The Conference for the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO), Illinois TESOL/Bilingual Education (ITBE), and others). Since that time, a number of students each year (ranging from 10-15) have presented at regional, national, and international conferences as a result of these workshops. These presentations, the research done in preparation for them, and the connections they have made at the conferences have lead many of these individuals into MA or PhD programs around the nation and abroad as their connections to the CoP continue to develop.
While my teaching, supervision, and mentoring will always have room for improvement, I believe that my success as a teacher is reflected in my courses, in the success of my students and TAs, and in the path taken by those I have mentored in our program.
As noted in the model, continuous peer assessment is part of the process—with the teacher for the course included amongst those ‘peers’. This enables changes in direction if needed and also allows the instructors to see what hidden skills participants may have that might let them make additional valuable contributions to the community.
Research as a CoP
I follow this same philosophy when I am supervising students working on independent studies, Theses, or Dissertations. Rather than simply telling such students what belongs in their thesis, I have them explore their potential topics by searching through the Proquest Theses and Dissertations database or our UIUC MATESL Library database. I ask them to first engage with the community by searching out examples in that database that have strong similarities with their own interests and to then skim a number of them to find ones that draw their attention. They then take a smaller sample and analyze them to see what chapters they contain, what sections are within those chapters, etc. They look for patterns that they find across the theses they analyzed or for unique elements that seemed especially pertinent to them. They present their findings on this to me so that we can discuss the expectations from the community of practice. In addition, I have any students for whom I am the Thesis Chair (anywhere from 4-10 students a semester) meet together to discuss their challenges, their discoveries, and their findings as a way to continue building their community.
Forming a CoP of Active Professionals
My roles as a professor (and member of the teaching community), research supervisor and program administrator are important, but I strongly believe that encouraging and mentoring the students outside of the classroom is equally important. Beginning in the fall of 2005, and on a yearly basis since that time, I have given workshops on writing conference proposals for students who have an interest in presenting at conferences connected to our CoP (e.g., the Conference on Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), The Conference for the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO), Illinois TESOL/Bilingual Education (ITBE), and others). Since that time, a number of students each year (ranging from 10-15) have presented at regional, national, and international conferences as a result of these workshops. These presentations, the research done in preparation for them, and the connections they have made at the conferences have lead many of these individuals into MA or PhD programs around the nation and abroad as their connections to the CoP continue to develop.
While my teaching, supervision, and mentoring will always have room for improvement, I believe that my success as a teacher is reflected in my courses, in the success of my students and TAs, and in the path taken by those I have mentored in our program.
