Hello, ITAIS members!

I am very excited to present to you the June edition of our ITAIS Newsletter. It is my first edition, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed the process of putting it together! I think my favorite part of the process was being able to interact with all the nice and talented people who have contributed to this edition.

In addition to the letters from our new Chair, Elizabeth Gillstrom, our Chair-Elect, Stephen Looney, and myself, we have two very relevant articles on research that is being conducted by some of our ITA colleagues, and a set of fantastic teaching tips from another pair of colleagues.

The first article, by Greta Gorsuch and Dale Griffee, is the second installment about their creation of a new ITA rater training program. The first installment was published in our February 2016 issue of the ITAIS Newsletter, in case you missed it. Next, we have an article from Elvis Wagner about the relationship between TOEFL iBT scores and the effectiveness of ITAs’ teaching. Finally, we have a teaching tip from Jennifer Grill and Maria Mendoza on various ways to improve ITAs’ ability to evaluate themselves.

If you were not able to submit an article for this newsletter, please consider submitting one for the October edition. You can send a submission to me at any time. The deadline for those submissions will be mid-September, so it might be wise to get them to me soon before you get too busy starting a new academic year.

For now, enjoy this edition of our newsletter.

Sincerely,

Maureen E. Templeman