The faculty and staff of the English Language Center have met annually with Dean Christopher P. Long, College of Arts & Letters, for a number of years at the end of the fall semester.
Of course, this yearly tradition took a different form due to the changes we all experienced this year. In lieu of a meeting, we sent the following message highlighting the success we have had over the last year.
Dear Dean Long,
We have traditionally visited you each fall for the last few years and, while we wanted to ask you for a meeting this year, we decided to save you from yet another Zoom meeting by sending this message. Even with the great uncertainty with international education and English language study within the U.S., the English Language Center has continued to work tirelessly to serve the college, the university, and our partnerships throughout the world. From language training students to provisionally admitted ones, we are dedicated to ensuring the success of international students across university life. We highlight five points from the last year of success:
1) We led our field in adapting to COVID-related challenges, including moving testing to virtual platforms, engaging with publishers to provide access to legal copies of top-quality materials, and creating a fully online immersive experience for language learners.
2) We supported CAL through faculty-led initiatives to add seats to the IAH pool, teach courses for the Ling/Lang department and the MAFLT program, and increase the number of graduate assistants in the center and the testing office.
3) We delivered the TESOL Certificate Program and successfully enrolled students throughout the year with our first certificate holders soon-to-be awarded. We also worked in partnership with the Graduate School to deliver ITA courses and programs and with CeLTA to provide much needed online development courses and workshops for language teaching and learning inside and outside of MSU.
4) We maintained existing international partnerships by offering online programming, deferring some programs to 2021, and establishing relationships with a number of new partners, including the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan. We also worked with our international partners to successfully and safely offer the spring administration of the CELC and CELP exams in person to several thousand students in Greece despite important pandemic restrictions.
5) We ended the fiscal year in the black for the first time in many years even with a continued decrease in International student enrollment. We also fully embraced our new WordPress site and now revise the site weekly, post blogs continually, and moved to an online application process in anticipation of positive growth in international enrollment in the near future.
We hope you and your family have a safe and restful winter break and we look forward to continued success in 2021.
Dr. Dustin De Felice,Associate Professor
Director, English Language Center
College of Arts & Letters|Michigan State University
B202 Wells Hall, 619 Red Cedar Road, East Lansing, MI 48824
(517) 353-5961 | defelic5@msu.edu
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