This Week in LANG 11/24/25

November 24, 2025
Categories: General Events, General News Tags: 2025, french, german, heritage, japanese

In this Edition: **Thanksgiving Week – No Classes on Wednesday**

Dear colleagues,

We have made it to Thanksgiving week! I hope you will have time to rest, relax and have time with friends or family this week just before the end of the semester is here. I hope that we can celebrate the end of the semester together right afterwards with our Potluck. 

Dates and Events this Week

Wednesday-Friday, November 26-28

  • Thanksgiving Break

Looking Ahead Dates and Events Fall 2025

December 2

  • Last Day of Classes 

December 3

  • Reading Day

December 4-10

  • Exam Period

December 12

  • Commencement, 3pm, CHESS

December 15 

  • Final Grades due 

December 18

Congratulations

Congratulations to the French Program

French Program Director, Allison Stedman, has been asked to be part of a research study on successful French programs that have experienced enrollment growth during the 2016-2021 period. This is because our program at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte has been identified as one of the only programs in the country that demonstrated positive enrollment trends during this challenging time. 

Dr. Stedman is being asked to share her insights on the strategies and practices that have contributed to the program’s success. This research is being conducted in collaboration with the Embassy of France in the USA in association with the MLA and aims to identify best practices that can benefit the broader Francophone academic community.

The findings of the study will be reported at the 2026 MLA convention in Toronto, which will be fantastic press for our college and for the university.  

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Congratulations to the German program for being recognized as making all the difference for a First Generation Niner. 

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Congratulations to the Japanese Studies program for hosting a successful 5th Annual JBusiness Forum. Shoutout to Enika Banerjee the organizer and coordinator of the Certificate of Business Japanese, Yukiko Yokono, the coordinator of the Japanese Studies program, Chikako Mori and Jordan Bledsoe. The JBusiness Forum is an event for students to share their Japanese business-related projects and presentations given by Japanese business insiders. The theme of this year’s forum is Navigating Globalization and Maintaining Cultural Identity. 120 participants enjoyed the presentations of a guest speaker as well as presentations from three students from Baylor University in Texas and three students from UNC Charlotte. 

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Congratulations to Javier García León who was invited as one of the keynote speakers at the First Interinstitutional Conference on Dialogues in Research and Second Language Teaching. The event is organized by the Master’s in Applied Linguistics for Spanish as a Foreign Language (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana) and the Master’s in Foreign Language Teaching (Universidad Pedagógica Nacional) and will take place on November 22, 2025, online. His talk is about corpus linguistics and its implications for language teaching. 

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Congratulations to Sandra Watts for completing the four week course “Applying Design Thinking to Digital Learning,” thus completing the multi-stage certification “Global Leadership in Online Learning.” Both are granted by the Online Learning Consortium.

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Congratulations to Sandra Watts who participated by invitation on a 2 hour panel on “Liderazgo y Estrategia en la Educación Digital” for the IV Encuentro Latinoamericano de Quality Matters along with Dr. Maribell Reyes Millán, Director of Digital Education at Tec de Monterrey (Mexico) and Dr. Carlos R. Morales, President of Lone Star College Online. 

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Commencement Updates

Please review commencement.charlotte.edu for full details about Winter Commencement.

Coming up in 2026

2026 Heritage Language Learning Symposium 

The 2026 Heritage Language Learning Symposium will occur on Thursday, February 19, and Friday, February 20, 2026 (10:00 am – 6:00 pm US EST each day). For 2026, the symposium will feature five prominent scholars engaged in Heritage Language Education. The presenters will share their research and practical experience with UNC Charlotte faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, as well as K-12 educators and attendees from other institutions. 

The Symposium will promote a broad understanding of literacy practices and training for heritage speakers by bringing together experts in bilingual education in Arabic, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish.

Please visit the website to find the program, abstracts for the research presentations, and workshops, as well as the registration form

Thank you for all you do. I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving Break. 

All the best,

Anabel