Letter from the Chair-Elect
Morag C. Burke, PhD, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Dear ITA Colleagues,
I hope that everyone has had a smooth start to the Fall semester!
For many of us, this is the busiest time of year as we welcome our new international graduate students, as well as continue to support our current graduate students. Many of us are experiencing program changes caused by a variety of issues that prompt us to navigate our programs in new directions. The strength of our ITA community is our openness and willingness to support each other and collaborate toward improvements for all of us. Please remember to reach out to our active online community if you need ideas, information, collaboration and support:
The TESOL conference in March of this year was an excellent example of our community coming together in person and furthering our sense of collegiality. In addition, the TESOL conference is a wonderful source of professional learning during the ITA sessions that benefit all of us, especially when the materials are shared out to the whole ITA-IS community (see the letter from the ITA-IS Chair, Sarah Emory), even if you weren’t able to attend TESOL this year.
We hope that you were inspired to submit a session proposal this year. TESOL recently contacted proposal writers to inform us of the status of proposals for next year’s conference, and whether proposals have been accepted. As you may recall, I sent out a call for participants in the ITA-IS Academic Session early in the summer and I’m happy to announce that we will be presenting our panel presentation at TESOL in March 2025. The session title is: “Essential Online Tools for ITA Pronunciation Instruction”.
We will be in touch throughout the Fall semester to keep you up to date on planning for TESOL 2025.
I am honored to be in the role of Chair-Elect for the 2024-2025 year, working closely with the ITA-IS Steering Committee, and especially with our Chair, Sarah Emory, to provide you with an excellent experience this year as a participant in the ITA professional community.
Warmly,
Morag (Mo) Burke
Dr. Morag Burke has worked in the adult TESOL field throughout her career, working with a variety of populations ranging from immigrants and refugees to international graduate students, postdocs and faculty. In addition, she teaches courses for domestic graduate students. She earned her PhD in Adult Education, with a focus on cross-cultural learning and international contexts. She earned her M.S. in International Development Education, and her BA is in Cultural Anthropology. She holds her teaching Certification in TESOL, and is certified in qualitative research methods.