Awards & Appointments

Seodial Deena has been appointed Vice President of the Association of Caribbean Studies.  His five-year charge includes: chairing meetings, conferences, and forums in absence of the President; planning and organizing the annual conference which will be held next year in Paris, France, July 2004; reading abstracts and making decisions about acceptance/rejection and placement of papers; and linking with writers, critics, and leaders of the Caribbean for assistance and development.  The Association of Caribbean Studies also sponsors the Journal of Caribbean Studies.

Ahmar Mahboob has been asked to Chair next year's Carolina TESOL Conference.  The conference will be held from November 11-13, 2004, at the Hilton Hotel in Wilmington, N.C. Recently, Mahboob and Dr. Lía Kamhi-Stein of California State University (Los Angeles), were awarded the 2003-04 Priority Research Grant from the TESOL International Research Foundation (TIRF).  The research grant is titled: "The Relationship between Teachers' English Proficiency and Curriculum Delivery in EFL Settings where English is an Institutionalized Language."  The amount of the grant is $25, 000.  The purpose of the research is to discern the impact that nonnative English-speaking (NNES) professionals have on pedagogy.  "Four out of five teachers of English are nonnative speakers," according to Mahboob.  The focus of the investigation is to fill the perceived gap in the literature about NNES professionals by creating case studies of them teaching two different classes in English as a foreign language (EFL) and post-colonial settings.  The investigation will take place in nine public high schools in Pakistan, South Korea, and Argentina, using two English language instructors in each school.  Case studies will be developed by triangulating qualitative and quantitative data, including videotaped lessons and lesson plans; two writing samples with different levels of difficulty; an oral interview in English; a teacher's belief inventory; and interviews with administrators.  The research is designed to support series of academic publications and presentations at conferences throughout the country, culminating in a presentation of findings at the TESOL conference in 2005 and the publication of a book in 2007.