The Language Teacher
01 - 2000

A SIG in Your Life

Alan Mackenzie

CUE - College and University Educators SIG



CUE is on a roll! Our publication On CUE is a huge success. Our membership is up as well. We are building a strong international profile and a closely-knit online community. We have laid the foundations for a successful mini-conference in 2000 and are planning to publish projects through 2001. From a largely passive past, the College and University Educator's SIG has just had one of its most active years yet, and is looking forward to being even more active this year.

CUE's odyssey began as one of the first and largest SIGs when first created way back in the mists of time (about six years ago). Since then, it has generally filled the requirements of what a SIG should do/be but has never really extended itself, or fully accessed the power of its vast membership. CUE has regularly held its CUE Forum at the JALT national conference, which has always been well attended, and has sponsored several featured speaker presenters over the years including Susan Steinbach last year and Amy Tsui in 1998. CUE has also published On CUE three times a year and maintains an information rich webpage at http://www.wild-e.org/cue/. The aim of the current executive board is to attempt to mobilize the near 300 members of CUE around the country to contribute concretely to the development of the organization and to help it grow in both stature and influence. Our vision for the future is of a dynamic national and international network of university educators making a real difference in tertiary education. We want to create both an autonomous support mechanism for all university educators teaching in a language that is not their students' first, in Japan or elsewhere, and to provide communication channels through which educators with specific interests come together for research, developmental and social purposes.

At the beginning of this year, we re-launched our newsletter, On CUE, in a new format, for it is our editors' priority to move towards upgrading On CUE to "journal" status. To this end, we obtained an ISSN registration and hope, through the institution of an editorial board, to make On CUE fully peer reviewed in the coming year.

We believe that On CUE has the potential for becoming a world-class teaching publication for College and University Educators. We also believe that CUE can become more international. One project that we would like help with is contacting organizations with a focus on colleges and university in other countries. With the expansion of the Internet, the possibilities for international collaboration on publication, research and conferences are endless. In addition, to aid professional collaboration, we are currently working on the mechanics behind a research database which will simultaneously be a kind of online CV for CUE members and a way to locate others with similar research interests for collaborative projects.

Our membership has increased slightly but more importantly, people have become actively involved. On several fronts, we are experiencing explosions of activity in CUE. At our AGM this year, many of the over twenty participants volunteered their services for the new editorial board and PR work (perhaps due to the free wine?); we thank them deeply for their help. Our mailing list CMN-talk has finally lifted off and is now enjoying a lively mixture of discussion on a number of topics. Recently, we have been discussing the state of EFL in Japan, discourse styles, and different formats for conferences and presentations within conferences on this list. There is no shortage of opinions, but after a less than harmonious start, the list appears to be policing itself well. Anyone perhaps scared off by earlier, overly argumentative discussions may want to sign on again to experience the gentler, but no less analytical tone the list is now taking.

A lot of interest has also been expressed in our main activity for the year 2000, the CUE mini-conference: "Content and Language Education: Looking at the Future." This major event is being hosted by Keisen University in Tama Center, Tokyo, where we are hoping to attract 250-300 participants for a two-day exploration of content-centered teaching and learning including presentations, workshops, and student and teacher poster sessions. The deadline for submitting proposals for the conference is February 29th and the pre-registration deadline is April 1st. Detailed information can be found at the CUE website: http://www.wild-e.org/cue/conferences/content.html.

All in all, we are in for a busy year: the mini-conference, our usual strong presence at JALT 2000 and various regional events, continuing publication of On CUE, mini-conference proceedings (hopefully free to all CUE members) and the launch of the CUE Research Database in the spring. I think you'll agree we are worth your 1500 yen. However, we can always use more hands. CUE (and of course JALT) only works because individuals decide to help out. The more involved the membership, the better the organization and the more those involved members benefit from their membership. Please consider getting more for your money by contacting Alan Mackenzie: asm@typhoon.co.jp to discover what you can do for CUE and what CUE can do for you.

(Editors' Note)

In this issue, Alan Mackenzie talks in glowing terms of the CUE SIG and invites aboard all interested. The coeditors of this column encourage 800-850 word reports (in English, Japanese, or a combination of both) from chapters and SIGs alike.



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