In the recent years, the term professional development has become a big buzzword in academic circles. As a result, Teaching and Learning Centers have been created in many institutions – to include my own. Yet, as fashionable as this term may be, professional development is nothing new. Indeed, professional development and IALLT have been synonymous for me.
IALLT has had a very important place in my professional life since my first days as Language Learning Center director who was charged with converting an old outdated lab into a new state-of-the art Language Learning Center (LLC). While developing a proposal for the new LLC, I visited the LLCs of several IALLT members who spent entire days with me, showing me their LLCs, discussing my preliminary proposal with me, giving me food for thought – in short: providing individualized professional development sessions. Without these sessions, I could not have completed a successful proposal in such a timely fashion.
Liberal Arts 2.0 