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PLaCE Student Spotlights

Founded in 2014, the PLaCE program has expanded over the years, but our core mission remains the same: provide a supportive academic program to help Purdue’s international students develop advanced levels of English language proficiency and intercultural competence. Visit our Student Spotlight map to get to know some of the outstanding international students who participated in PLaCE courses during the 2024–25 academic year.
 

15 SCLA 111 Students Presented at Spring 2025 Undergraduate Research Conference

 
Under the mentorship of their SCLA 111 instructor, PLaCE Lecturer Dr. Haiyan Li, five teams totalling 15 international undergraduate students presented their AI-related SCLA 111 course projects at Purdue’s 2025 Spring Undergraduate Research Conference. Using BoodleBox, a multi-AI team-based collaboration platform, the students explored cultural frameworks—such as the Iceberg Model—through empirical data gathered from surveys and interviews.
 
Their projects addressed U.S. social and cultural topics, including AI usage preferences, leadership styles in American companies, short-form media consumption, the impact of policy changes on university cultural centers, and the experiences of international students. The presentations were well received. Notably, the team of Shadangi, Doshi, Chou, & Lee earned an overall score of 5.8 from the formal judging panel, surpassing the conference-wide average of 5.6 (Purdue University Office of Undergraduate Research, 2025).

New Student Organization Dedicated to Bringing Together Community Members from Different Cultures, Programs, and Disciplines 

The Campus Connection Club, a new student organization at Purdue, was founded in late March 2025 with the goal of "bring[ing] together students from all around the world to participate in some of the most interesting events on campus, providing an immersive experience of Purdue as well as the Greater Lafayette area while encouraging cross-cultural conversations" (Boming Chen, Club President). 
 
The Campus Connections Club originated in spring 2023 as a short course taught by Senior Lecturer Dr. Joseph Sorell, based on the PLaCE foundational courses, SCLA 110 and 111, which feature field trips designed for students to explore local cultures and communities. While the short course has been a great start, enrollment in PLaCE courses is limited to international students and restricted by the academic calendar. To make the experience available year-round and open to the entire Purdue community, a parallel student organization was founded in spring 2025 by several participants of the PLaCE short course. 
 

Malaysian Student Association Purdue Indianapolis: A Home Away from Home and a Bridge to Malaysian Culture

 
PLaCE has offered the three-credit undergraduate course sequence, SCLA 110 and 111, at Purdue Indianapolis (PIN) since Fall 2024. SCLA 110 and 111 have been known to serve as an intercultural hub and a supportive community for first-year international students. In Spring 2025, a small group of PIN students from these courses took the initiative to establish the Malaysian Student Association (MSA) at Purdue University Indianapolis—an organization “dedicated to fostering a sense of community among Malaysian students while promoting Malaysian culture to the campus and wider Indianapolis community” (Boilerlink).
 

PLaCE Team Honored by Vice Provost’s Office at Sept. 2024 Teaching Excellence Celebration

 
As one of two teams to receive the 2024 "Innovation Hub Award for Innovative Uses of Generative AI" at the inaugural Festival of Teaching and Learning hosted by the Honors College, the PLaCE team—Dr. Haiyan Li, Dr. Minsun Kim, Ty Climer, and Dr. Lixia Cheng—was later honored at the September 26, 2024 Celebration of Teaching Excellence, hosted by the Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning, which recognizes recipients of Purdue’s university-level teaching award.
 

PLaCE Lecturer Awarded CIE SoTL Fellowship and CILMAR Seed Grant

PLaCE Lecturer Dr. Haiyan Li has been selected as a 2025 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) fellow by the the Center forInstructional Excellence. With guidance from the program facilitator, she will use this opportunity to design a SoTL project for SCLA 111 in the upcoming academic year.
 
In addition, Dr. Li has received a Seed Grant from the Center for Intercultural Learning, Mentoring, Assessment, and Research (CILMAR). Her project will explore how AI-powered platforms can enhance intercultural communication skills among students in SCLA 110 and 111. 
 

PLaCE Lecturer Participated in Steps to Leaps Perspective Project

PLaCE Lecturer Dr. Parvaneh Rezaee participated in the Steps to Leaps Perspective Project—an initiative led by the Office of the Vice Provost for Student Life and the Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning—from summer to fall 2024. She integrated the WELL-BEING and LEADERSHIP pillars into her SCLA 110 course to help "enhance the academic experience and promote student well-being," particularly among her own students. Through targeted course activities, her students engaged with core well-being concepts and reflected on their leadership potential. 
 

Professional Exchange: PLaCE Director Visits UMass Boston ESL Program

On April 28, 2025, PLaCE Director Dr. Matthew Allen was invited by Dr. Hadi R. Banat, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric & Composition and ESL Director at UMass Boston, to lead a workshop titled What Does Success Look Like in an ESL Program? In this session, Dr. Allen shared how this central question has shaped his efforts to develop a program identity, culture, and curriculum that empower a diverse team to work toward a shared vision of success. Participants were invited to engage in dialogue around building learning communities and fostering collaborative programmatic cultures.
 

New Ideas Grant Awarded to PLaCE Team for Ukraine Project

In April 2025, PLaCE Lecturer Dr. Haiyan Li and Associate Director Dr. Lixia Cheng received Purdue’s New Ideas Grant through the Giant Leaps Global Impact program for their project, AI-Powered English Academic Writing in Wartime Ukraine: A Resilience-Building Pilot Initiative for Medical University Students. This funding will support their research on integrating ChatGPT to enhance English for Specific and Academic Purposes instruction at a Ukrainian medical university. By applying the Technology Acceptance Model and a mixed-methods evaluation approach, the team aims to strengthen instructional resilience, promote ethical AI use, and develop a scalable model for delivering high-quality, tech-supported learning under crisis conditions.
 

Two PLaCE Instructor Teams Invited to Present at Each of 2024 and 2025 Festivals of Teaching and Learning

The John Martinson Honors College's Blue Sky Teaching and Learning Laboratory hosted the 2025 Festival of Teaching and Learning on April 11. For the second consecutive year, two PLaCE teams of English language and intercultural communication instructors were invited to present their teaching and curriculum innovations.
 
At the 2025 Festival, Dr. Negin Hosseini Goodrich showcased an AI-powered vocabulary learning game, while Drs. Haiyan Li and Lixia Cheng presented AI-Integrated PBL (Project-Based Learning) for Collaborative Undergraduate Research.
 
During the inaugural Festival in April 2024, Dr. Haiyan Li, Dr. Minsun Kim, Ty Climer, and Dr. Lixia Cheng introduced a forward-thinking pedagogical approach to integrating instructor-guided ChatGPT training in an undergraduate Language and Cultural Exchange course for international ESL students. Drs. Parvaneh Rezaee and Matthew Allen shared their "story stack" activity, a low-tech yet impactful method for launching digital storytelling in PLaCE's SCLA 110, 111, and Short Courses. The team of Li, Kim, Climer, & Cheng was one of two recipients of the "Innovation Hub Award for Innovative Uses of Generative AI" in 2024.
 

PLaCE Featured at Undergraduate Research and Mentoring Showcase

Due to PLaCE staff’s active involvement in mentoring and judging undergraduate research presentations, PLaCE was invited to present at the Purdue Office of Undergraduate Research’s Undergraduate Research and Mentoring Program Showcase in mid-May 2025. Michael Mutti, Dr. Haiyan Li, and Dr. Matthew Allen represented PLaCE, highlighting its undergraduate courses and ongoing projects to various departments and campus offices. Their presentation spotlighted recent course projects by Dr. Li’s 15 SCLA 111 students, which were showcased at Purdue’s Spring 2025 Undergraduate Research Conference. The PLaCE team also expressed enthusiasm for continued involvement in supporting undergraduate research initiatives.
 

Senior Lecturer Reflects on PLaCE's and Her Own Contribution to Colombia Purdue Partnership

Hannah Bush, a Senior Lecturer who joined PLaCE in 2014, is one of the PLaCE lecturers who have been involved in the design and implementation of various English language courses and short-term immersive programs offered by PLaCE to contribute to the Colombia Purdue Partnership. More recently, she has created a Language and Cultural Exchange Program for Educators in Colombia. This story has more details about this LaCE program as well as Hannah Bush's professional and intercultural experiences during her trip to Colombia in May 2024.
 

Seven PLaCE Lecturers Promoted to Senior Lecturer

Seven Lecturers have been promoted to Senior Lecturers, effective July 1, 2025:
Armand Affricano
Heejeon Bras
Charles Brown
Margaret Hass
Minsun Kim
David Sparks
Sabina Zeynalova
 
They join the ranks of previously promoted Senior Lecturers: Hannah Bush, Ty Climer, Steve Moriarty, Mariam Alamyar, Nadezda Pimenova, and Joseph Sorell. 
 

PLaCE Hosts a Participant in Purdue Ukrainian Scholars Initiative

The Purdue Ukrainian Scholars Initiative, created in March 2022, is "one of the first and largest of similar university-led programs in the United States" (Purdue News, April 2022; October 2023; December 2024). PLaCE has hosted one of the 15 current visiting scholars since summer 2024. Dr. Violeta Kalnytska, an associate professor from Kharkiv National Medical University, Ukraine, has worked closely with her PLaCE sponsor, Lecturer Dr. Haiyan Li, and PLaCE Associate Director of Evaluation Dr. Lixia Cheng, on curriculum development aimed at supporting university-level English language education in Ukraine during wartime. The team presented their preliminary findings in an invited colloquium during the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) annual conference in Denver, CO, in late March 2025. 
 

Upcoming Local Events

Adapted from May 2025 Issue of "CSSAC Campus Connection"

January 13 – May 3: Purdue's Spring 2025 semester