“Imagining the Future, Empowering the World: Approaches to Language Teaching, Learning, and Research.”

As we experience a pandemic and learn new ways to do our work and serve our students, the gift of coming together through an event such as this is something to celebrate. This spirit of celebration, of gratitude, and of re-purposing and re-inventing ourselves and what we do has been a driving force for planning and executing this year’s roundtable. We hope that coming together and learning from each other can recharge our desires to do our work as best as we can.

As the first fully-online SLAT Interdisciplinary Roundtable, we are pleased to have more than 40 presenters from all over the world sharing their work, experiences, and expertise with us. Professor Lourdes Ortega, our keynote speaker, as well as Dr. Samina Murad, our plenary speaker, will contribute to the richness of this event by sharing with us the possibilities of our field as we progress in a world that screams for love, peace, and acceptance as well as ways in which we can work towards filling that gap of technology and instruction that pervades in our communities nowadays.

Let us imagine together and let us continue empowering others and each other. More than ever, as language professionals, we need to make sure our skills, knowledge, and relations are used for the greater good. What we do, what we have done, and what we can do is work with people and for the people -- it has always been! This is the message we hope you take away after participating in the 20th SLAT Interdisciplinary Roundtable: that we can change our realities by coming together and staying together.

Receive our warmest welcome! We hope you enjoy it.

Sincerely,

Jaime Fabricio Mejia Mayorga

SLATSA President 2020-2021

jfmejiam@email.arizona.edu