ESL Symposium Accepting Registrations Through Feb. 15

The deadline to register for the fifth-annual University of Arkansas ESL Symposium is Feb. 15. Educators can earn six hours of professional development for attending the Feb. 22 symposium.

The symposium takes place from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 22, at GuestHouse Hotel, formerly the Clarion Inn in Fayetteville. Cost is $115 with a special price of $60 for students. Registration may be done online.

Joyce Nutta, an associate professor and coordinator of English as a second language education at the University of Central Florida, will give a keynote address titled “What’s Different About Differentiating For English Learners.”

Carlos Cortes, professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Riverside, will perform the one-person play that he wrote, “A Conversation with Alana: One Boy’s Multicultural Rite of Passage.”

In the fall of 2012, proceeds from the symposium provided a scholarship to a University of Arkansas intern seeking an ESL endorsement and co-sponsored a lecture by Pat Mora, a bilingual author of children’s books. Plans are under way to re-establish the Holmes Scholars program in the College of Education and Health Professions to provide one tuition scholarship to a doctoral student who is from a culturally and linguistically diverse background.

“The ESL Symposium proceeds are preparing teachers to effectively serve culturally and linguistically diverse students, providing professional development from multicultural perspectives and helping to increase the number of higher education faculty and PK-12 administrators from diverse backgrounds,” said Diana Gonzales Worthen, one of the organizers.

Symposium sponsors are the curriculum and instruction department in the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas and Project RISE (Realizing and Increasing Student Excellence), a federally funded program operated by the college to increase the number of local teachers certified in English as a second language. Gonzales Worthen directs Project RISE.