2022 Executive Board Election

Welcome to this year’s executive board election.

The candidates have written both professional and biographical statements so that you might get to know them better. Please scroll down the page to read all the candidate statements. They are listed in alphabetical order.

When you have made your decision, choose the candidates your prefer and click “Vote”. You may choose up to TWO, and the two receiving the most votes in this election will become the new board members. The individuals elected will take office at the conclusion of this year’s conference and serve a 3-year term.

Adolfo Carrillo Cabello

Professional Statement 

I am honored to be nominated to serve on the CALICO Execute Board. Since my first presentation at CALICO in 2005, I have appreciated the supportive environment that the CALICO family offers, and have substantially benefited from the feedback received, as well as the wealth of ideas and connections established over the years. I have been fortunate to attend and present at CALICO for over a decade. Throughout this time, I have seen how this organization has expanded its diversity to include more languages and areas of technology-enhanced language learning. It has been inspiring to see the new connections CALICO has established with other organizations, such as ACTFL, while continuing to nurture existing ones, such as IALLT. Without a doubt, CALICO is well positioned to continue to offer expertise and knowledge that can positively influence the way we learn languages and cultures.

While the wealth of knowledge that CALICO practitioners offer is highly extensive, the timely influence in practical approaches continues to lag. Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) changed how we conceive of teaching and influenced our perspectives on what we value as learning and the learning of languages. Furthermore, ERT has also allowed us to engage in conversations with multiple audiences and stakeholders about the value of technology-enhanced approaches, particularly in remote learning environments. These conversations have helped us identify the importance of balancing research and praxis, and timely adoptions of research-informed approaches. If elected to the board, I would like to explore and propose an increase in professional development that can significantly reach wider audiences and contribute to practical approaches to language teaching and learning. Currently, I serve as co-coordinator of the IALLT webinar series, and I am also co-chair of the Language Collaboratory. These roles have prepared me well to advance CALICO efforts on professional development.

Biostatement 

Adolfo Carrillo Cabello (Ph.D., Iowa State University) is a technology enhanced language learning specialist at the University of Minnesota. In this role, Adolfo consults with language faculty from fourteen language programs on the integration of technology for language teaching and learning in various course formats, including remote and distance learning. Adolfo’s work and research have focused on understanding effective pedagogical strategies and delivery modes, materials development, and professional learning. Adolfo has extensive experience in governance and has held multiple leadership roles. Currently, Adolfo is a Senator in the University of Minnesota system, and he serves as Chair-Elect of the Professional and Administrative Senate and a member of the Senate Consultative Committee for the university.

Saniye Deniz Gokcora

Professional Statement

Deniz Gokcora has been an active second language educator for 28 years. Receiving a Fulbright grant brought her to the U.S. as a graduate student.  Although the grant was for a two-year M.A. degree in Teaching English as Second Language, she pursued further to get a doctorate in Second Language and Cultures Education. She has had experience in teaching a variety of ESL and teacher education courses.  Her research focuses on three major areas.  Second language acquisition and technology, second language assessment, and faculty development.  As the assessment coordinator of CARLA at the University of Minnesota, she has provided workshops on proficiency-based assessment and created the Virtual Item Bank.  After joining BMCC, she has started teaching hybrid and fully online courses and has started integrating COIL projects into her classes. Her research studies focused on the perceptions of learners on Diigo, the bookmarking tool, and the digital literacies of second language users in a writing-intensive course. She is currently working on a project about teaching presence in an ESL writing course.   She has been engaged in COIL since the Fall of 2019 and has worked with professors at the University of the Bahamas to include COIL in a developmental writing course and a first-year writing course.  There are two COIL projects included in this partnership.  The first one includes an essay comparing college experiences, and the second is an oral/visual project involving global social justice issues.  Likewise, another COIL project has been created to connect students in NYC with the students in The Bahamas about their second language learning experiences.  In Spring 2022, professor Gokcora has been selected for a Stevens Initiative grant project which involves a virtual exchange with a professor at Jordan University of Science and Technology. Their project will involve reducing inequalities towards the elderly and analyzing collected narratives using the genderlect theory.

Biostatement

A faculty member at BMCC-CUNY since 2013, Deniz Gokcora received her M.A. degree in Teaching English as a Second Language and her Ph.D. in Second Languages and Cultures Education from the University of Minnesota in Twin Cities. Her dissertation is on Chinese teaching assistants’ and U.S. undergraduates’ perceptions of teaching and teachers. She has worked as a faculty developer at the Defense Language Institute at Monterey, CA, and as an Assessment Coordinator at the Center for Advanced Research in Second Language Acquisition (CARLA) at the University of Minnesota.  Her research interests are second language teaching and technology, digital literacies, collaborative online international learning (COIL), and faculty development.

Cristina Pardo-Ballester

Professional Statement

I would like to nominate myself as a CALICO Executive Board Member. In 2002, I attended a CALICO conference for the first time at the University of California, Davis. I was not yet a presenter, but instead I volunteered as a tech support. Because of my strong interest in language acquisition and technology, CALICO became my first professional organization and home and since then I have expanded and broadened my research with language and technology. CALICO has a special place in my heart.  At the annual conferences, I met great colleagues and friends and I continue connecting with them.    I have been a CALICO member and a presenter for almost twenty years and I am delighted to see how CALICO has supported young students and senior CALL scholars alike via a variety of resources (CALICO SIGs, workshops, and awards). On a personal note, in 2011 I was nominated to serve on the board, but I did not make the cut. Now, I am even more familiar with the structure of the organization and I strongly support its mission. Having further matured as a scholar, I continue to attend convention meetings for other organizations, and more than ever I am a very proud CALICO member and satisfied when in the CALICO meetings the bylaws and the code of conduct of CALICO are not only mentioned by the president, but also ask to adhere to them. If elected as an Executive Board Member I will continue doing what I have been doing  and become and even stronger advocate (e.g., attend the annual meeting and conference, motivate young scholars to join the organization, review papers, vote when elections are open) and any other responsibilities promoting the computer assisted learning and instruction fields.

Biostatement

Cristina Pardo-Ballester (Ph.D., University of California, Davis 2007) is an Associate Professor of Hispanic Linguistics in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Iowa State University. Her research interests center on CALL, instructional technology, language testing and assessment, and translation studies. She has published in, among others, CALICO, LLT, and LAQ. She has co-authored a beginning Spanish university text (Pura Vida with Wiley, 2014 & 2020), and co-edited with Julio Rodriguez the CALICO’s 2013 monograph series for the volume Design-Based Research and CALL. Since 2017, she serves on the Program Committee for the International Conference on Higher Education Advances.

Tricia Thrasher

Professional Statement

Biostatement