As SLW enters its 7^th year as an interest section, I am honored to serve as your chair for 2011-12. I would like to thank all previous chairs and all other members of the leadership team, including the steering committee, who have contributed to making SLW such a vibrant and effective interest section. You all deserve credit. So do our almost 2,000 members, for making it such an engaging and friendly professional community. I also extend a special thanks to our outgoing chair, Danielle Zawodny Wetzel, for helping me ease through the transition from chair-elect.

With the 45^th Annual TESOL Convention in New Orleans behind us, SLW can look back at another successful conference. We hosted 43 sessions including several research-oriented and practice-oriented sessions, four colloquia, two workshops, and of course our special sessions: two InterSections in collaboration with Secondary Schools IS and Non-Native English-Speaking Teachers IS and our Academic Session focusing on placement and assessment issues (see TESOL 2012 Updates in this newsletter). As usual, our annual open meeting was well attended and provided an opportunity for participants to brainstorm ideas for proposal topics of interest for the 2012 convention. Among those topics, L2 writing in K-12, ESL/L2 support in the writing center, and as always assessment issues seemed to generate most traction.

Also of note from the meeting is the discussion of TESOL’s decision to eliminate the individual interest sections’ booths in the exhibit hall at this year’s convention in favor of two shared booths in the TESOL Resource Center, where each of the 21 interest sections would have only one or two 2-hour time slots during the entire convention. Already last year, when the idea was in the works, we as an interest section spoke out strongly against it because we have traditionally staffed our booth fully throughout the convention and used it as a meeting, networking, and recruiting spot. At the meeting our membership unanimously agreed that we should keep pushing strongly to get our individual booth back. After seeing the change in action in New Orleans, several other interest sections were also dissatisfied with the limited exposure, so the debate is continuing, and there is a chance that individual booths will be brought back next year for those interest sections that want one. Our leadership team will work hard make that happen.

Finally, at this year’s conference we once again hosted our special event and social hour, “An Evening with Friends of Second Language Writing,” at Ralph & Kacoo’s in the French Quarter. As usual, everybody had a great time and a chance to reconnect with old friends and colleagues as well create new contacts. We hope to be able to continue this event in 2012.

The proposal review process for next year’s conference has been completed, and SLW received 171 proposals (one more than last year but still short of the record 200 received two years ago). Given the lingering economic woes that affect all areas of the educational system, it is great that we have been able to keep our number of proposals constant. It will ensure a strong SLW presence again next year in Philadelphia. As you may know each interest section receives a number of slots on the program proportionate to the number of proposals received. Even though we are one of the youngest, only 4 of the 21 interest sections received more proposals than we did—a testament to our engaged membership and to the importance of L2 writing within TESOL.

Several of our members took time out of their summer to help adjudicate proposals, and I would like to thank them all for their contribution to this important service to SLW and TESOL:

Our interest section truly is a great professional community to be part of, and it is a privilege for me to have the chance to serve as your chair. I look forward to a year of seeing our members’ continued engagement with our interest section through discussions on our e-list and contributions to our newsletter in the form of articles, reviews, or reports on any issue pertinent to L2 writing.

Let me know if there is anything I can do to enhance your experience with SLWIS.

Best wishes,

Ditlev