PRESIDENT’S LETTER — NOVEMBER 14, 2017

Dear IALLT members,

As IALLT’s new president, I wanted to send all of you some updates about all things IALLT.

It was wonderful to see so many friends and colleagues at the 2017 IALLT conference at Concordia College – and to make new ones! And it was very encouraging to see so many new members. A special thanks again to Ron Balko, our fantastic host, and to everyone involved in planning this event!

The board has appointed several new council members, and pending very few cases the rotation will be complete soon. At that point, the list on our web site will be updated with the new council as well. As a reminder, most council positions are for two years and we are always looking for volunteers. One of the best ways to stay in touch is to get involved. As you know, IALLT is an all-volunteer organization, and we welcome anyone, including those who are new to the organization and/or the profession (and that includes graduate students!), to get involved. There is plenty to do, and there are ways to get involved that may only require a little bit of your time. (Go to https://iallt.org/about/ and click on the link under “Get Involved” section to volunteer)

The new board has been very busy, meeting monthly via skype and getting things done asynchronously in between those meetings. We are making very good progress in organizing our 2018 IALLT Summit meeting (official dates coming very soon!) and our 2019 conference. Both will be held at the University of Oregon –  https://iallt.org/iallt-2019/

For me, the IALLT conference every two years is one of the highlights of my academic life, which makes the two years in between a bit less exciting. Luckily, there is much to do and be happy about until the 2019 conference at the University of Oregon begins:

• Meet up at the IALLT Booth at ACTFL in Nashville! And connect through social media with your fellow IALLTers who will also attend ACTFL. For example, there are the IALLT@Conferences and the regular IALLT facebook groups.
• Attend a live webinar: https://iallt.org/resources/webinars/
• View one of the many recorded webinars (a free member benefit): https://iallt.wildapricot.org/Sys/Login?ReturnUrl=%2fmembers%2fwebinar-recordings
• Read the latest issue of the IALLT Journal: http://www.ialltjournal.org/index.php/ialltjournal
• Connect through LLTI ( https://iallt.org/resources/llti-listserv/ ) or the IALLT Facebook group.
• Come to the IALLT summit.

The board receives many good ideas from our members, for example calls to continue this past conference’s SIGs or a way to organize Language Center photos. Because many of these projects need someone to make them come to life, I invite everyone to submit a brief proposal that the board can review. We’d love for you to take the initiative and take on a leadership role within the organization. Such roles are not confined to official board and council positions (but might turn into a council position). Past examples of such initiatives include the Language Center Evaluation Toolkit and the resurrected IALLT Survey. Please don’t hesitate to contact me about your ideas!

The previous board has left this board with a wonderful starting position: a successful conference, strong webinars and publications, a very nice and functioning web site, and good workflows (everything is now consolidated in google drive). I will write more soon about all the work and changes that are happening. Transparency continues to be of importance for this new board as well, and we intend to keep you updated on everything behind the scenes so that it is no longer behind the scenes.

All the best,

Felix Kronenberg

President, International Association for Language Learning Technology