This year, the 50th annual Illinois TESOL-Bilingual Education (ITBE) conference took place with the theme "Innovate to Educate: New Horizons in Language Teaching."

Many students, faculty, and alumni from UIUC's Linguistics, MATESOL, and ESL programs played a role in the conference. UIUC's own Dr. Anna Mendoza gave an engaging afternoon keynote: "Native Speaker Standard Is a Myth," and Dr. Ulugbek Nurmukhamedov - MATESOL Alum and former lecturer in the ESL Program - presented the morning keynote: "What AI Doesn’t Know about ITBE and Teacher Educators. "  Additionally, ESL lecturer and ITBE board member, Abdulsamad Humaidan presented "How to write a proposal for 2026 ITBE Convention!

There were also several presentations from current students:

• Nataliya Spirydovich and Ekaterina Shutenko, MATESOL students, presented "Smarter, Faster Material Design: How AI Empowers Language Teachers"
• Adebola Obayemi, MATESOL student, presented "Pedagogical Strategies for Sustaining Motivation in Adult ESL Learners"
• Arezoo Ataollahi, MATESOL student, presented "Accessible and Effective Visual Presentations for ESL Classrooms"
• Sasha Radford and Kseniia Mikhailova, MATESOL students, presented "Casual to Classy: Teaching Language Formality With Artificial Intelligence"
• Rita Ginting, MATESOL student, presented "Raising inclusive education awareness with technology in English classroom"
• Elif Varlik, MATESOL student, presented "Comparative Study of Language Teacher Training for Multilingual Classrooms"
• Nihan Sanic, MATESOL student, presented "Academic Writing Anxiety in EFL Learners & Innovative Mitigation Strategies"
• Mehmet Sahin, MATESOL student, presented "LGBTQI Educator Identity Negotiation, Experience Navigation, and Institutional Heteroprofessionalism" 

   

This year, ITBE awarded two, one-day registration grants. Both went to students from Illinois. Congratulations Mehmet Sahin and Elif Varlik!

Well done to these many students and faculty members representing UIUC at the ITBE conference!