Where are you now?

[Suzan Stamper]

Share news about where you are and what you are doing now.

"Before" and "after" photos are encouraged.

(Excerpts from postings may be used in a PowerPoint presentation during the Celebration Open Hours or in the post-convention newsletter. Please let me - Suzan Stamper at [e-mail] - know if I do not have your permission to share postings.)

Past Chairs/Convention
1983 Toronto – founding meeting
1984 Houston - David Sanders
1985 New York – Vance Stevens
1986 Anaheim – Roger Kenner
1987 Miami Beach - Macey Taylor
1988 Chicago - Peter Lee
1989 San Antonio - Katherine (Muhlhausen) McIntyre
1990 San Francisco - Gerald Dalgish
1991 New York - Claire Bradin Siskin
1992 Vancouver - Deborah Healey
1993 Atlanta - Doug Coleman
1994 Baltimore - Marianne Phinney
1995 Long Beach - Elizabeth Hanson-Smith
1996 Chicago - Susan Dever
1997 Orlando - Jeff Magoto
1998 Seattle - Carolyn Heacock
1999 New York - Ron Corio
2000 Vancouver - Leslie Opp-Beckman
2001 St. Louis - Tom Robb
2002 Salt Lake City - Colin Sachs + Tom Robb
2003 Baltimore - Suzan (Moody) Stamper
2004 Long Beach - Greg Kessler
2005 San Antonio - Susanne McLaughlin
2006 Tampa Bay - Susan Gaer
2007 Seattle - Steven Sharp
2008 New York - John Madden
2009 Denver - Sandy Wagner
2010 Boston – Christine Bauer-Ramazani

[Christine Bauer-Ramazani]

Going into the 23rd year at Saint Michael's College and still teaching the graduate CALL Online course, Intensive English courses, academic English bridge courses, and undergraduate business. I'm happy to have had more excitement added through my involvement with the CALL-IS, the Electronic Village Online, the EV Classics Fairs, and the Web casts from there.

These days I am over my head involved with the coordination of a grant through the US Department of State for Latin American university students. I get to all of the programming, academic and extra-curricular, as well as host students. A week ago our first cohort of 10 Nicaraguans and 10 Panamanians returned home, and in a week I get to start all over again with 10 Uruguayans and 10 Venezuelans. They have been really fun, though, and have rewarded my efforts greatly, including a meeting with my daughter in Nicaragua the day before she returned to her college.

Of course I incorporated technology into this new endeavor! I established a Facebook Group site and a Wiki for the grant. In the Wiki, I got the new students connected to my previous students, and the class work as well as photos and links to activities have been posted there.

Check out the Facebook group site with photos and videos for the UIELSP Grant.
And here's the link to the UIELSP Grant Wiki.

[Susan Gaer]

My first TESOL was in San Francisco but it was earlier than 1990. I was in graduate school and I am not sure I even knew what a computer was. I think it was more like 1980 since I went to South Korea in 1991 and that is when I first met Tom Robb. I went to a JALT conference in Japan and he was the chair of JALT. I actually won the exhibit lottery (My first one ever) and he gave me 300.00. In 1995, I had started using Schmooze and that was when I first learned about CALL. I met all my Schmooze buddies. I also got to meet all the CALL people and they made me feel right at home even though I wasn't " a geek". However, my favorite memory has to be of Chris Sauer belly dancing. Now I know that someone has a picture of that!

[Greg Kessler]

I am still at Ohio University, but on my fourth different position here and second department. I finished my PhD in Instructional Technology in 2005. I am now Assistant Professor of CALL in the Linguistics Department (A position that opened when Marmo Soemarmo retired in 2007).

I have been forced to limit my conference attendance due to budget cuts and won't be at TESOL this year. I went way beyond my funding to attend WorldCALL last Summer and just returned from CALICO last night.

[Jeff Magoto]

Like many of you, I never set out to be a CALLyte. I just landed in places (Athens, Ohio and Eugene, Oregon) where the waters were already deeply infested.

I'm looking forward to this TESOL, my first since Salt Lake. CALL-IS life for me began in Chicago '88 in the "hospitality suite", and I was soon sucked in by the comradeship and support of the group. I was chair '96-97 about the same time that I switched from full-time teaching to full-time language lab directing at the University of Oregon. (In the early days when access to "labs" was so carefully controlled, we'd always wondered what they would be like if they let TESOL people run them). Thanks to Neil Anderson, I got to be Associate Chair of the '98 Conference in Seattle--definitely one of the most satisfying professional experiences I've had.

Ten years later most of my time is spent running a program for Less Commonly Taught Languages and developing tools for K-16. Our latest project, ANVILL, is the result of a five-year collaboration with long time cutting edge CALL advocate, Jim Duber, and an enterprising graduate student who told me about Drupal three years ago. Thanks to funding from UO's National Foreign Language Resource Center, we can give it away.

[Marianne Phinney]

Becoming chair of the CALL-IS actually led to a new career path for me. I was recruited by a start-up software company, Inso Corporation, to be the project leader for the development of an ESL grammar checker. CALL-IS folks may remember that I transitioned from cruising the vendor booths to being in a vendor booth, and learned how much your feet hurt when you're standing on a concrete exhibition hall floor all day.

From there our company was sold to Lernout and Hauspie, which collapsed amid an SEC scandal a few years later. By then I had gone on to technology development in various publishing companies, starting with Heinle and Heinle (now part of Cengage) and going on to Houghton Mifflin college division (now also part of Cengage). I took a short stint (a year and a half) as the Director of Project Management for a small independent software developer and am now back in publishing with Pearson Education as a Technical Program Manager in the Learning Technologies Group. Along the way I received my PMP (Project Management Professional) certification.

I still have a soft spot for CALL, but the money is in the math applications, so a lot of what I've worked on over the past few years has been math and science. I've continued to be involved in community theater, both directing and acting. I live south of Boston with my family.

[Susanne McLaughlin]

For me, it's not 'where are you now?' but 'are you still there?'

I was the director of the English Language Program at Roosevelt University in Chicago when I was chair and there have been no changes. We have about 80 students and they have all been admitted to Roosevelt University. We have no English language proficiency requirements for admission and provide a full program of English language support. One of the reasons for this policy is that Roosevelt University is known for the Chicago College of Performing Arts. It's an elite program and the College recruits all over the world. Other universities have football teams; we have an orchestra. It's a challenge to have students who are learning English and trying to fit their homework in around 6 hours of practice a day, rehearsals, and performances.

[Claire Bradin Siskin]

I teach a CALL course at the University of Pittsburgh, where I also direct the Robert Henderson Language Media Center. Personal website: http://www.edvista.com/claire