Professional Development Awards

2025 Professional Development Awards

These awards are made to instructors of languages at UT who are seeking to develop new materials, courses, or methods for teaching their languages, or who would like to attend a conference or purchase materials in order to improve their teaching. All submissions are due January 31, 2025.  

The TLC offers professional development awards to instructors of languages at UT-Austin to enhance their language classes taught at the University. These mini-grants are specifically for practicing instructors of languages — at any rank. Grant awards will range from $500 to $1500, depending on the scope of the proposed project. Awards are available for use at any time during the period April 1 - August 31, 2025.

Online submission form

2024 Professional Development Award Recipients

The Texas Language Center is pleased to announce its Professional Development Award recipients for 2024!

This year’s recipients, including instructors from across five departments, are:

• Teresa Blumenthal, Doctoral Student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese - CARLA Institute: Introduction to Practical Program Evaluation for Heritage Language Programs
• Chikako Cooke, Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Asian Studies - Attending a Workshop to Learn a New Language Style Movement in Japan, Both for Practical Reasons and to Understand the Philosophy Behind It
• Diego de Jesus Santos, Assistant Instructor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese - Espaflix - Online Video Platform for the Teaching of Spanish
• Víctor Garre León, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese - Attending and presenting at the 2024 Conference of the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL)
• Junko Hatanaka, Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Asian Studies - Poster Presentation at ICJLE (International Conference on Japanese Education) 2024
• Bernadeta Kaminska, Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies - Teacher Training
• Frane Karabatić, Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies - Tako lako, New Open Source Online Textbook for Beginner-level L2 Croatian
• Mina Kim, Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Asian Studies - Integrating Interactive Storytelling into Korean as a Second Language Curriculum: Who Benefits?
• Yi-Chun Lin, Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Asian Studies - Develop Materials for the New Course- Advanced Conversation for Professionals in Chinese
• Alice McCoy-Bae, Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Asian Studies - Connecting Communities through Monthly Korean Film Screening
• Jocelly Meiners, Associate Professor of Instruction in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese - Creating Lesson Plans to Implement Critical Pedagogies
• Pablo Reinoso-Andrés, Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese - Teaching Training Course: Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Spanish Classroom
• Ipek Sahinler, Graduate Student in the Program in Comparative Literature  - Accessible Translation Discussions: Turkish Literature in Translation Reading Group Goes Global
• Ellenor Shoemaker, Associate Professor of Instruction in the Department of French and Italian - TeleTandem: A Virtual Conversation Exchange
• Sarah Jey Whitehead, Associate Professor of Instruction in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese - Take It and Run: Structuring Freedom for Gifted Language Student Discussions

Congratulations to these instructors!