Amy S. Thompson, Ph.D., is a dynamic and nationally recognized academic leader and scholar, currently serving as the Director of the School of Teacher Education and Mack and Effie Campbell Distinguished Professor at Florida State University. With extensive experience leading sizable and complex academic units, she oversees large numbers of faculty and staff, programs, and complex budgets, while advancing strategic initiatives that align institutional priorities with student success and community impact. Previously, she held three different leadership roles at West Virginia University in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences: Inaugural Director of International Relations and Strategic Planning of the college, Founding Co-Director of the English Language Learning Institute, and Chair of the Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics; she was also a Woodburn professor. She has recently been given the Modern Language Association (MLA), Association of Language Departments (ALD) Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession, indicating her dedication to the disciplines represented in humanities and social sciences. She is active in professional service, most notably as her treasurer and president-elect roles in the International Association of the Psychology of Language Learning.  A prolific scholar in applied linguistics with more than 55 peer-reviewed publications, books, and a number of national and international invited lectures and workshops, Dr. Thompson’s research focuses on multilingualism, language learning, linguistic racism/native-speakerism, women in higher education, and higher education leadership. Known for her transparent, collaborative leadership style and her ability to navigate complexity with vision and integrity, she brings a strong commitment to innovation, faculty and staff development, student success, and inclusive excellence in higher education.

According to the Modern Language Association (MLA) database, language enrollments have been on the decline in recent years (Lusin, 2023; Lusin et al., 2023), for a number of factors, such as attitudes towards specific languages, pressure from advisors, parents and/or friends, changing funding models that discourage students from taking coursework outside of the major, and, of course, the idea that world language study is not important in an Anglophone context (Lanvers et al., 2021; Morgan & Thompson, 2023; Thompson, 2017, 2021; Thompson & Morgan, 2022). There are also two studies that explicitly examine LOTE enrollment in the United States in relation to the overall population (Thompson, 2021) and individual states’ political leanings (Gradoville, 2025). As such we need strong leaders in the field to ensure its survival.

Why are applied linguistics poised to lead? Applied linguistics is inherently interdisciplinary; our field is a synthesis of language and culture studies, psychology, pedagogy, language policy, and STEM-focused frameworks. Experience with such interdisciplinarity puts us in a position to create collaborations with a number of units within our departments and throughout our institutions. As applied linguists also oftentimes believe in providing access to research to those outside of academia, we also engage in public-facing scholarship and have explicit training in both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The discipline itself, coupled with purposeful leadership development, positions applied linguists to be leaders of academic units in a variety of contexts.

This presentation will provide examples of skills that applied linguists possess that position us to be successful leaders in a variety of academic contexts – leading language departments and in other leadership roles. The session will be useful for those who are interested in seeing how disciplinary skills can be applied in unique ways, as well as for both current and aspiring leaders.

In recent years, second language and culture education has often been framed through narratives of decline, utility, or surveillance, often fueled by technological mediation that privileges scale, efficiency, and sometimes the invisibilization of difference, over hospitality or the poetics of human connections. While such accounts may respond to institutional pressures, they risk narrowing our pedagogical imaginations. This presentation seeks to reclaim language learning as an emancipatory practice: one that fosters learners’ agency, ethical relationality, curiosity, pleasure, and a renewed sense of wonder in engaging with languages and cultures.

In this presentation, I will endeavor to show how educators can leverage the tenets of maker culture and social pedagogies to empower students to be locuteurs-acteurs (speaker / social actor – Kern & Liddicoat) and be the designers of social futures (NLG). The goal is to construct pedagogical practices that foster learners’ agency, altruism, ethical relationality, curiosity, pleasure, and a renewed sense of wonder in engaging with languages and cultures. The end goal here, is to re-assert the potential – and capacity – of language and culture learning to cultivate social connection and support learners in (re-)imagining different horizons to open futures centered on a shared narrative.

Sébastien Dubreil, Ph.D., is  Teaching Professor of Global French Studies, Second Language Acquisition and Technology-Enhanced Learning as well as Coordinator of Global French Studies program in the Department of Languages, Cultures & Applied Linguistics at Carnagie Mellon University. As a scholar-educator in CALL, Sébastien Dubriel, Ph.D. focuses on designing transformative learning environments that extend beyond the classroom to engage learners in culturally relevant and empowering ways. His scholarship examines the notions of social pedagogies, linguistic landscapes, design thinking, game-based learning and maker culture. Current projects explore social pedagogies and L2 learning through gameplay and design, featuring collaborations such as games for French, an online board game archive (with Sabrina Culyba) and the digital game Bonne Chance (with Cary Staples). By connecting language learners to each other and diverse physical and digital communities, his work fosters maker-inspired pedagogical experiences geared to authoring various (digital) media. He published widely in leading journals, including the MLJ, CALICO Journal, and FL Annals among others.