Melissa Ferro, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA
Deany Goode, Metropolitan Community College Kansas City - Penn Valley, Kansas City, Missouri, USA

Dear HEIS Members,

Happy New Year! It has been a busy 9 months since we began our term as HEIS Co-Chairs. In the late spring, we launched a survey to gather data on what you value most from your HEIS membership, and the topics or issues you believe are central to higher education TESOL programs. Through this survey, we also identified individuals interested in serving on the HEIS leadership team and a newly composed editorial team.

Our goal has been to recruit leaders from across the globe to provide a better representation of international TESOL issues and voices in higher education. We believe we are on the road to achieving this goal. We are excited to have Cristina Manea Gultekin, English Lecturer with the School of Foreign Languages at Gaziantep University, Gaziantep, Turkey serve as the new HEIS Community Manager. We are equally thrilled to work with the 2022-2023 HEIS Chair Elect, Abdulsamad Humaidan, Lecturer with the Department of Linguistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Finally, we congratulate our returning editor, Dr. Zhenjie Weng, on the successful defense of her doctoral dissertation. With Zhenjie’s help, we are training a new editorial team and are pleased to publish our first HEIS Newsletter of 2023.

Additionally, we would like to celebrate our former Co-Chair Elect Dr. Dawn Lucovich on her elected position to the TESOL Nominating Committee, and our Secretary, Dr. Cynthia Wiseman, on her new appointment to the TESOL Board of Directors. Although their service to HEIS has been shortened by their new roles, we appreciate their interest in our interest section and their ongoing work in support of our great international organization.

In the coming months, our new leadership team is collaborating to offer HEIS members opportunities to interact with one another through high-quality webinars and online discussions.

We are equally enthusiastic about two collaborative intersection sessions that we will co-facilitate at TESOL 2023 in Portland, OR. Working with the Kate Hardin, the Chair-Elect of the Refugee Concerns Interest Section, we have organized a panel discussion titled, Spotlight on Refugees in Higher Education. Our second panel session titled, From Heteronormativity to Inclusivity in ESL/EFL Higher Education is the result of our collaboration with the Co-Chairs of the Social Responsibility Interest Section, Fatmeh Waleed Alalawneh and Bashar Al Hariri. We hope to see you in Portland!

If you are interested in joining our team, we are actively recruiting a HEIS Social Media Manager, a Secretary, and a Chair-elect for 2023-2024. To learn more about these positions, please feel free to contact Melissa at MelissasFerro@gmail.com or Deany at DeanyGoode@gmail.com.

Wishing you a 2023 filled with good health and prosperity!

Melissa Ferro and Deany Goode