Current Officers:
Rachel Saury, President
Donna Apgar, Vice-President
Karl Fisher, Secretary-Treasurer
Newsletter Editor
Andrew Ross and Matala-Tala Basanga, Publications
Number of newsletters published last year: 0
Meetings held in the past year:
|
|
Meeting 1 |
Meeting 2 |
|
Location |
University of Richmond, |
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA |
|
Theme |
? |
Technology, Foreign Languages and Internationalizing the Curriculum |
|
Date(s) |
October 15-16 |
April 7-8 |
|
Attendance |
20 |
40 |
Describe the health of your organization. Include any initiatives undertaken, issues of concern, or other things you think the Board should be aware of.
We are trying to get MAALLD off the ground again. The meeting in Richmond was small but hopeful. The few people who did come made a commitment to working together to regenerate interest in MAALLD and to pull off a second conference at the University of Virginia in April. The Board worked hard in the planning process--Karl Fisher did a great job of building a new mailing list and sending out cards; Donna's help was invaluable in receiving proposals for papers and helping me keep track of deadlines and things that needed to be done. Andrew Ross helped drum up some great workshops. On the UVA side, Pat Taliaferro, the Administrative Asst. of my Center here, worked extremely hard to make all the arrangements for the banquet breakfast buffets, entertainment, and historical tours. It was her work that really made the event classy. The quality of presentations was extremely high with perhaps one or two minor exceptions and feedback from participants was unanimously happy and congratulatory.
Issues of concern are as follows: how to get the momentum going to get our publications off the ground. The name Mid-Atlantic Association of Language Laboratory Directors is a problem. Feedback from participants is that the name puts off potential participants because the term "language laboratory directors" seems to delimit the scope of the program. Many people said they would not have come if it had not been for the conference title, which clued them in that we were looking to a broader audience. I'd like to change the name to something more closely resembling IALL's name. Really, the major issue is time, time, time. We are looking towards doing the next meeting at Duke during Spring, 2001 and are discussing a joint conference with SEALL in 2002-03.