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. The candidates are listed in alphabetical order.
When you have made your decision, choose the candidates your prefer and click “Vote” to submit. You may choose up to TWO individuals, 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.
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Kelly Arispe
Professional Statement
It is an honor to be nominated to serve as a CALICO Executive Board Member. I attended my first CALICO conference in 2009 as a graduate student. Since then, I’ve been an active presenter and participator at CALICO conferences as well as a member and former president of the Teacher Education SIG. This organization has had a profound impact on my professional career both as an educator and researcher. This community is more than just a think tank of brilliant minds; it’s a community of kind and supportive colleagues who support interdisciplinary and collaborative projects that continue to propel the field further.
One area where I’d specifically like to make an impact is the critical connection between CALL and teacher education. Furthermore, I’d like to help grow our K-12 language teacher membership and participation. While we have a SIG that is invested in Teacher Education, I think CALICO must continue to play a vital role in supporting K-12 language teachers and continue to recruit faculty from language programs in Higher Education that might not have graduate programs or be disconnected from this organization. I’m also a good systems thinker and would be eager to support the many “reviewer” roles associated with the responsibilities of executive board members.
Biostatement
Kelly Arispe (Ph.D. UC Davis), is an Associate Professor at Boise State University where she teaches upper-division Spanish Linguistics courses and Teacher Education courses in methods, literacy, and assessment for pre-service language teachers. She is the Program Coordinator for French, German, and Spanish Secondary Education Majors and Director of the Graduate Certificate in Computer Assisted Language Learning. Her primary research focuses on L2 OER-enabled Pedagogy (OEP) and Computer and Mobile Assisted Language Learning. She is co-director of the Pathways Project, an OER repository that hosts over 900 ancillary materials that foster interpersonal speaking and intercultural competence. She was recently awarded an NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant to evaluate the impact of OER/OEP on K-12 urban and rural teacher practices in Idaho. She is also participating as an external researcher with VALIANT, which is an Erasmus+ KA3 project.
Peggy Hartwick
Professional Statement
CALICO 2013 at the University of Hawai‘I, Manoa, was my first! As a Canadian, not only was I seduced by the warmer climate, but I was excited to immerse myself in this niche area of theory and research I was just beginning to explore.
CALICO was my first foray into academic conferencing. The organization and its members immediately appealed to me – the keynotes, varied workshops, presentations, and poster sessions opened doors to new discoveries and ways of thinking. This first conference gave me the confidence to further explore the affordances of 3DVLEs.
While I am still interested in VR, I have become intrigued by other online learning spaces, like ePortfolios. I continue to explore how online spaces and digital tools create unique opportunities for learner engagement. As an advocate, I am keenly aware that our pedagogical practices, including assessment, need to shift, as we adopt CALL in our teaching. These shifts must be informed by theory and empirical research and always in consideration of the learner. The CALICO community importantly provides this.
To this day, CALICO is the professional organization with which I identify most. I am a past Chair of the Immersive Realities SIG and through CALICO, I found a committee member for my PhD, met several co-researchers, and forged many special friendships.
I am honoured to have been nominated to the executive board. If elected, I will help to maintain the inclusive values of CALICO while encouraging innovative thinking regarding technology in language learning contexts. In this everchanging landscape of technologies, CALICO’s role is ever necessary in ensuring dissemination of knowledge and exploration through research as we strive for equity to all language learners. Additionally, I will help to transfer this knowledge beyond our community to better inform the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning as a whole.
Biostatement
Peggy Hartwick, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the School of Linguistics and Discourse Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She teaches courses in Second Language Acquisition, EFL Teaching methodologies, and Inquiry methods, with a specific focus on the theoretical foundations to CALL. Peggy has guided several independent studies with students interested in CALL. Her research focuses on the affordances of digital tools and online learning contexts. Peggy was the recipient of the 2015 Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE)/Brightspace Innovation Award, which demonstrates her passion for education and student engagement.
Michael Hofmeyr
Professional Statement
It is an honour to be considered for nomination to serve on the CALICO Executive Board. While I am still a relative newcomer to CALICO and to the field of CALL, the experience that I had in presenting my then in-progress doctoral research at the 2021 online conference in the midst of the global pandemic was so positive that I felt right at home from the start, not to mention inspired to see my project through to the end and to share my findings with the community in person the following year in Seattle. CALICO does superb work in bringing together a diverse community of CALL practitioners and researchers from around the world every year to mingle, make meaningful connections, and to share their research and discoveries in a collegial and welcoming environment. I am eager to contribute more to this society by joining its organisational structure, learning from more experienced colleagues, and helping to expand and improve its activities to further drive the field of CALL forward.
If I am elected to the board, I hope to contribute in particular to the following areas. Having recently finished my doctoral studies, I have experienced for myself and seen in so many of my graduate student colleagues the anxieties and insecurities that often accompany the PhD journey. My first priority will therefore be to expand and improve upon the ways in which CALICO encourages researchers-in-training as well as less experienced researchers to effectively present their work and to make fruitful professional connections with their more established peers. Furthermore, given the current precariousness of the academic job market, I would like to improve the opportunities for researchers to make connections and to acquire skills that will help them to improve their employment prospects outside of academia too by promoting deeper cooperation with industry partners. Finally, having been actively involved in JALTCALL and EuroCALL as well in recent years, I have noticed that there is much opportunity for further integration, and for the exchange of ideas and expertise, among the various national and regional CALL communities. I would like to promote more collaboration and exchange between these organisations for the mutual benefit of all.
Biostatement
Michael Hofmeyr (PhD, Kyoto University, 2023) is currently a Lecturer in English and General Linguistics at the Graduate School of Humanities at Osaka University, Japan. In April 2024, he will take up a tenured lectureship in Applied Linguistics at the Tokyo University of Science. He has been actively presenting his doctoral research findings on digital game-based language learning at major international CALL and applied linguistics conferences and has published a number of peer-reviewed research papers, book chapters, and conference proceedings on this topic. He was also the recipient of a substantial Japanese government research grant. He is now working on a new project to investigate the potential of AI-based language tools in the Japanese educational context. Michael currently serves on the steering committee for the JALTCALL 2024 conference as Grants Officer and took over the role of Editor-in-Chief of the Osaka JALT Journal in 2023, a publication dedicated to encouraging language teachers in the community to improve and disseminate their scholarly writing.
Greg Kessler
Professional Statement
I have been involved in CALICO since 1999. In the intervening years I have been the president of CALICO, a board member, conference chair, conference host, book series editor and am currently still on the CALICO Journal editorial board. While I have been an active member of other professional organizations, CALICO has been the central professional organization throughout my career. I value it greatly and feel like the community is an extended family. I know how valuable it has been to me throughout my career and I welcome the opportunity to pay things forward by serving on the board once again. I am particularly interested in finding ways that the organization can best meet the needs of those who are early in their careers. I know every organization is facing challenges these days and I would be dedicated to do what I can to help CALICO thrive.
Biostatement
Greg Kessler is professor of innovative learning design & technology at Ohio University. He has published extensively and delivered invited talks around the world. His research addresses technology, teaching, learning, culture and language with an emphasis on teacher preparation and curricular design. He has held transformative leadership positions, including president of the computer assisted language instruction consortium (CALICO), president of the Ohio teachers of English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) and chair of the TESOL CALL interest section. He has been an editor for numerous monographs, special issues and serial publications, including the TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, CALICO Equinox book series, Advances in CALL Practice & Research, and the Language Teaching & Technology forum in the journal Language Learning & Technology among others. He is currently chair of the Educational Studies department at Ohio University.
Oksana Vorobel
Professional Statement
I feel so grateful and honored to be nominated to serve as a member on the CALICO Executive Board. I attended the CALICO conference for the first time in 2016, and the organization has become my professional family since then. Since Day 1, I felt that I belonged. The members of this wonderful community of scholars and practitioners made me feel welcome and inspired. Every year I am impressed by the high-quality presentations and support that the CALICO community provides to its members.
Over these years, I have served CALICO in a number of roles. As a graduate student, I started as a reviewer for the CALICO Journal in 2012. In 2019, I was fortunate to become a Book Review Editor for the journal and continue to work in this role as part of the editorial team. I have also been closely involved in the work of LTLT and SLAT SIGs, serving as a vice chair and chair of both. When organizing panel presentations and workshops, sponsored by the SIGs, I invited leading scholars who are existing CALICO members and those who subsequently joined CALICO in an effort to increase the visibility of CALICO and to recruit new members.
With the relatively long tradition of and solid scholarly foundation in CALL, the need for more work in the field is still constantly growing thanks to the recent expansion of online language teaching due to COVID-19 and the revolution AI tools cause in education. Therefore, if I am elected as a member of the CALICO Executive Board, I will do my best to promote the CALICO organization nationally and internationally and work on its development and growth. I believe it is so important to offer more mentoring opportunities to the students in CALICO and to recruit more members. I would also look forward to collaborating with others on CALICO policies and other duties of this executive position. Having such a supportive, inspiring, and friendly community is unique and key to the growth of the field, and I would be honored to contribute to it.
Thank you for considering me!
Biostatement
Oksana Vorobel is a Professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York. She received her Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition and Instructional Technology at the University of South Florida. Her research interests include second language literacy, use of technology in language learning and teaching, and distance language education. She published her work in journals such as System, TESOL Journal, Teachers College Record, Writing & Pedagogy, Review of Education, and Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. She serves as a Book Review Editor for the CALICO Journal. She has taught various courses in linguistics and ESL/EFL in the USA and abroad.