AAAL Leadership Updates

Table of Contents

1. AAAL’s Synergies: History and Growth, Giving, and Change and Sustainability | Lourdes Ortega
2. Houston Welcomes You! | Ryuko Kubota

AAAL’s Synergies: History and Growth, Giving, and Change and Sustainability

Lourdes Ortega, Georgetown University

AAAL President

Knowledge of one’s own history is an important source of wisdom and discernment. Our association has a 46-year-long history. Last summer, Roger Shuy (President in 1979–1980) shared with me how AAAL came to be:

Many years ago, the U.S. participated in AILA by sending a representative to the AILA meetings. The Center for Applied Linguistics used to pay for me to attend and participate in those meetings. Other countries had national associations, but the U.S. did not. During an AILA meeting in Belgium, Bernard Spolsky, Dick Tucker, and I met together to try to form an American association. Spolsky wrote a constitution, and we decided to form AAAL. We then mailed out announcements to U.S. applied linguists (email was not invented yet) saying that we would hold our first meeting separately during the next meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA). About a hundred showed up. We held our first election of officers and decided that Wilga Rivers should have that honor as President, with me as Vice President. We continued to meet during LSA for a few years until later presidents and boards decided to leave LSA and meet at the same time as TESOL meetings. The rest is history. AAAL has grown to immense size today, all from that meeting in Belgium with Spolsky, Tucker, and Shuy. (Roger Shuy, email personal correspondence, Jun 16, 2023)

Indeed, in 46 years, AAAL has grown from 100 members in 1978 to over 2,000 members in 2023. Growth brings new needs and new opportunities. AAAL members have always been generous in meeting both through selfless giving—of not only their volunteer time but also their monetary gifts. Our first AAAL President, Wilga Rivers (1978–1979), gifted us a fund that supports a graduate student presenting on outstanding pedagogical research at the annual conference. And it is also in her honor that the conference features the invited Wilga Rivers Language Pedagogy Colloquium each year. Just last year, the generous giving of Bill Grabe (President in 2001–2002) and Fredricka Stoller enabled the creation of a new student travel award. It was President Grabe who envisioned and created the Fund for the Future of Applied Linguistics (FFAL) in 2000. The FFAL has successfully supported four to ten graduate student presenters at the annual conferences for over 20 years. This year we are running the Campaign to Sustain the Future of FFAL, which has the goal of increasing the level of the FFAL endowment by $65,000 by the end of 2023. Any member can donate, and no amount is too small or too large! About 40% of our members are graduate students. They are the future of applied linguistics. They deserve all our support. 

With a distinguished history and a path of growth, change presents itself as both inevitable and generative. The last time our Bylaws changed was in April 2020, when, under President Laura Collins, the membership approved the shift from a three-year to a four-year presidential structure, creating the new role of President Elect, which the First Vice President fulfills the year after chairing the annual conference. Another change to our Bylaws has just passed this October 2023, when the membership voted in overwhelming support for the creation of a new AAAL officer on the Executive Committee (EC) devoted to supporting the association’s goals for justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI). This change is directed to achieve sustainability in the work that, as an association, we are able to devote to our diversity and justice goals. This work will become even more capacious under the dedicated purview of the new JEDI officer. With this change, AAAL’s EC will expand from 9 to 10 voting members.

Bylaws changes are important in charting directions for the future of AAAL. For this reason, they are always the fruit of long and considered processes of deliberation involving not only the EC but also task forces and ad hoc committees as well. The change in October was the culmination of a two-year process made possible through countless hours of work by volunteers. Gratitude is owed to the work of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access Task Force, formed in March 2022 by President Fabiola Ehlers-Zavala and comprised of Patricia Baquedano-López, Ashley Moore, Valentino Rahming, Manka Varghese, and EC Liaison Ryuko Kubota. They recommended the change from the acronym DEIA to the acronym JEDI, which since the summer of 2020 and the murder of George Floyd has become increasingly more commonly used with the purpose of highlighting that justice is a driver of all other values. Without the struggle for justice, there can be no lasting improvement in diversity, or equity, or inclusion.

It was also this Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access Task Force that suggested the creation of a new officer on the EC to make AAAL’s JEDI work more sustainable and systemic. To follow up on these two recommendations, in March 2023, I convened a JEDI Ad Hoc Committee comprised of Ashley Moore and Elizabeth Miller (Co-chairs) with Usree Bhattacharya, Suresh Canagarajah, Trish Morita-Mullaney, Jennifer Phuong, and Jon Henner (in memoriam). They have worked tirelessly since then to advise on the creation of the new JEDI officer as well as to support greater accessibility and inclusion policies and practices at AAAL 2024 in Houston. The JEDI Ad Hoc Committee continues with their crucial work to this date. The work of these colleagues has been invaluable, and it has benefited the association in palpable and many more subtle ways.

The new JEDI Officer will be elected (eventually, every three years) by the membership. Indeed, at the time of this writing, this year’s Nominating Committee, led by Chair Amanda Kibler, is working hard to secure nominations on the ballot, which will be announced at the Conference Business Meeting and voted on during the summer of 2024. Once the new officer begins their term in March 2025, their first task will be to work closely with our present JEDI Ad Hoc Committee and, in due time, to bring to the EC a plan for a new JEDI Standing Committee, who, led by the JEDI officer, will support the JEDI-related goals of the association. Thus, with this change and as always, AAAL is firmly aiming at sustainability and capacity in achieving the three goals that anchor our mission: to promote high-quality and impactful research, professional networking, and intellectual development in all areas of applied linguistics; to support ethical and informed understandings of language-related processes and practices from multiple research paradigms; and to build and sustain just and equitable conditions for individuals, communities, and societies.

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Houston Welcomes You!

Ryuko Kubota, University of British Columbia

AAAL First Vice President and 2024 Conference Chair

The 2024 AAAL conference with the theme “Thinking Otherwise, Acting for Change” will take place in Houston, Texas, the sacred, historical, and significant land of the Karankawa Kadla peoples and relatives. It is important for us to acknowledge that it is because of these Indigenous caretaker stewards that we can gather together.

As we witness an escalated number of natural and human-caused disasters, both locally and globally, we increasingly recognize the importance of the role of language and communication for honoring humanity and cultivating wellbeing for all. The 2024 AAAL conference will offer an intellectual space for sharing, learning, and understanding through engaged dialogues that are civil, respectful, and compassionate. Such dialogues will enable us to foster mutual understanding and build solidarity across differences in terms of racial, gender, and sexual identity, nationality, religion, disability, and many more diverse identities. Let us remember that AAAL is “committed to building and sustaining just and equitable conditions for individuals, communities, and societies” (see our mission).

Our conference planning team has been following a great legacy created by the Michigan State University team for the 2023 conference. As of November 16, 1,319 people from all over the world and throughout Texas have registered for the conference. We are excited to offer a stimulating program with individual papers, posters, and roundtables as well as one-hour and two-hour colloquia, representing our 25 strands. I express my gratitude to the 49 strand coordinators and over 700 reviewers for their dedicated voluntary work. This year’s roundtable sessions take a new format. Each session will last for one hour, during which three presenters will share their research for 10 minutes each. These presentations will be followed by a discussion with the audience around the table. I hope this format will stimulate engaged discussions.

AAAL 2024 also offers exciting special sessions and events. The kickoff event is the plenary presented by Kris Aric Knisely on Friday, March 1 in a webinar format. Both members and non-members can join the live presentation and view the recording until March 30, 2024. The onsite program begins in the afternoon of Friday, March 15 with the pre-conference workshops, to be held at the University of Houston. The Graduate Student Council (GSC) Research Roundtable and Social Mixer will be held on Friday evening at the conference hotel. Starting on Saturday, there will be plenary presentations and invited colloquia with diverse topics ranging from artificial intelligence, technology in language teaching, Indigenous language reclamation, decolonial pedagogy, L2 writing, multilingualism, linguistic stereotyping, racial and disability justice, and more. 

As in 2023, we are offering networking events for each of the six affinity groups: (1) BIPOC scholars, (2) student-parent scholars, (3) African diaspora scholars, (4) Global South scholars, (5) scholars with disabilities, and (6) first generation scholars. These will be great opportunities for scholars to meet and build connections. You are also invited to join the poster sessions presented by high school and undergraduate students—this year’s outreach event coordinated by Dr. Jason Mizell at the University of Miami and Dr. Maredil León at the University of Houston. In addition to Friday’s event, the GSC will also hold lunch-hour roundtables on Saturday and Sunday.

As mentioned initially, Houston is the home of the Karankawa Kadla peoples. On Sunday, there will be a session on the revitalization of the Karankawa Kadla language and another on the revitalization of the Tunica-Biloxi language spoken by a neighboring tribe. You will find a booth of the American Indian Center of Houston in the Exhibit Hall along with many regular and new publisher sponsors.

As in the past, we will offer a prayer room for Muslim participants, a mother’s room for lactation needs, and a designated family resting area. Please visit family resources for more information. In 2024, the AAAL conference celebrates the holy month of Ramadan. All participants are encouraged to be considerate of those who are fasting and to honor its spiritual significance. We also encourage all attendees to take care of themselves and others while at the venue and request that all participants follow the health and safety guidelines. This year, the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Ad-Hoc Committee created new guidelines for requesting accommodations or adjustments to meet your disability and special needs. To make a request, please follow the instructions to fill out a form expressing your needs. Coming soon on the AAAL website is a set of useful resources for inclusive presentations based on universal design principles; all are encouraged to make use of these resources.

Our 2024 conference venue is the Hyatt Regency Hotel Houston. Visit our hotel and travel information website for more information. Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States with vast ethnic and linguistic diversity. At least 145 languages are spoken by city residents, and 90 nations have their consulate. The city offers a wide range of performing and visual arts, fun activities for families with children, and countless restaurants featuring a variety of cuisines, including Tex Mex, South American, Middle Eastern, and Vietnamese. Visit Houston offers more information. 

Finally, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the AAAL 2024 Conference Planning Team, including Dr. Robert Randez at Western Michigan University for serving as Conference Program Technician to provide multi-year support; Dr. Eunjeong Lee at the University of Houston for coordinating the pre-conference workshops and for building partnerships with local Indigenous communities; and the eight amazing graduate student volunteers at the University of British Columbia—Ryosuke Aoyama, Alexandra Ross, Vincent Chien, Rosie David, Frances Maddalozzo, Senyao Shen, Serikbolsyn Tastanbek, and Anastasia Zhuravleva—who worked tirelessly to communicate with multiple parties, manage proposals, coordinate special events, solicit sponsorship, and connect with local Indigenous communities. I also extend my thanks to the staff in our Business Office, Katie Henley, Sherry Battle, Laura Haller, and Hannah O’Dell.

On behalf of AAAL and AAAL 2024 Conference Planning Team, I welcome you all to Houston in March!

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