Mentoring and Educating the Next Generation of Language Faculty
Join Our Workshop in October 2025
Explore workshops designed to enhance your mentoring skills and to connect with you with fellow educators for ongoing support and development.
Mentoring Matters
Supporting Junior Faculty and graduate students as teachers of language
Our conference emphasizes the vital role of mentoring in language education, fostering professional growth, and enhancing teaching practices through peer support and shared expertise.
Workshop Overview & Goals
Workshop Description
This workshop explores the evolving role of mentorship in language teaching, with a focus on supporting graduate students, early-career instructors, and the faculty and staff who mentor them. Bringing together administrators, language program directors, course coordinators, and graduate student instructors, the workshop will serve as a collaborative space to reflect on existing mentorship models, share best practices, and develop strategies that prepare junior colleagues for successful, sustainable careers in language education.
Key Goals
- Reexamining the concept of “mentoring” in contrast with related practices such as training and teaching.
- Reflecting on the terminology we use to describe our junior colleagues and the implications of those labels.
- Identifying gaps in current mentoring approaches and addressing them through intentional, field-specific guidance.
- Centering the voices and needs of graduate student instructors and integrating them more fully into the governance and culture of language programs.
- Showcasing effective models, including graduate-level methodology courses and SLA certificate programs.
In alignment with the Consortium’s commitment to graduate student engagement, the workshop will offer a limited number of competitive travel grants to ensure broader access and participation.
Outcomes
Participants will leave with a more nuanced understanding of mentorship as a lifelong, collaborative process in language education. Junior instructors will find space for reflection and validation, while mentors will gain tools to better support and empower future educators within a shifting academic and professional landscape. Learn more here!
“Professional Learning as Praxis: Rethinking How We Mentor Language Teacher-Scholars”
Keynote Address by Kate Paesani
Friday, October 24, 2025 | 4 p.m.
Humanities Quadrangle L01, lower level, Alice Theater
Workshop Organizers
Candace Skorupa, Lead Workshop Organizer, Senior Lector I, Department of French, Yale University
Candace Skorupa (Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Yale University) taught French at Harvard University and Smith College before coming back to Yale in 2005. Her pedagogical work has long focused on telecollaborative exchanges, with recent work on comparing these with language partner platforms and AI-driven language partners. As Language Program Director in the Department of French from 2021-2025, she implemented a new first-year language curriculum and founded a working group of language program directors; she continues to co-teach a theory and methodologies course, mentors graduate student instructors, and drives pedagogical innovations at all levels of the language program.
Mariana Bono, Co-Organizer, Senior Lecturer in Spanish and Portuguese, Associate Director of the Spanish Language Program, Department of Spanish & Portuguese, Princeton University
Mariana Bono (PhD, Université de la Sorbonne) is a scholar of Multilingual Studies and Second Language Acquisition. Before joining Princeton University, she taught at École Polytechnique in Paris and Birkbeck, University of London. Her research focuses on discourses and practices of multilingualism in educational settings, with publications on language and self-representation, cultural and historical conceptions of language, collegiate language education, and epistemic justice for multilingual learners. At Princeton’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese, she has helped design and implement a multiliteracy-based approach in the Spanish Language Program, where she mentors graduate student instructors and advances pedagogical innovation across the curriculum.
Maeve Hooper, Co-Organizer, Assistant Senior Instructional Professor; Director of the German Language Program, University of Chicago
Maeve Hooper (PhD, University of Chicago) is a dedicated pedagogue, focused on helping students at all levels of German develop language proficiency and intercultural competence through a communicative language approach. In addition to her ongoing research into the role of proficiency-based assessments in curriculum design, she is engaged in a project exploring the impact of language proficiency on student experiences abroad. Other areas of interest include best practices for the evaluation of teaching, peer mentorship, and inclusive pedagogy.
Catalina Méndez Vallejo, Co-Organizer, Senior Lecturer in Spanish and Portuguese, Associate Director of the Spanish Language Program, Department of Spanish & Portuguese, Princeton University
Dunia C. Méndez Vallejo (PhD, Indiana University) is a syntactician, interested in researching language variation in Spanish by analyzing the interface between syntax and other branches of linguistics. She is currently working on the semantic and pragmatic features of the Focalizing Ser structure in Spanish. At Princeton, she is a placement officer and teaches a variety of language and linguistics courses. As Associate Director of the Spanish Language Program, she has collaborated in several pedagogical projects to design new courses, mentor graduate student instructors, and create online learning platforms.
Graphics by Joji Baratelli