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Program Summary AY23-24

Foundational Credit Courses

In Academic Year 2023–24, PLaCE enrolled 358 international ESL undergraduate students in 28 sections of ENGL 110 and 257 students in 22 sections of ENGL 111.

ENGL 110 and 111, "American Language and Culture I & II" will become SCLA 110 and 111, "Language and Cultural Exchange I & II" starting in Summer 2024. 

Non-Credit Short Courses

In Academic Year 2023–24, a total of 575 graduate students and visiting scholars (including the Ukrainian scholars in the Purdue Ukrainian Scholars program) voluntarily enrolled in an average of about three PLaCE Short Courses or Workshops per student. There were a total of 1,585 registrations consisting of 621 registrations for 56 Short Courses and 964 registrations for 102 Workshop topics.

In Fall 2023 Session 2, a PLaCE lecturer offered a successful six-week Workshop series focusing on collaboration and academic presentations to a group of students from the Daniels School of Business. 

Language Testing for Program Evaluation and Course Placement Decision-Making

PLaCE staff proctored a total of 485 ACE-In tests (our in-house internet-based English proficiency test) and administered 260 VST and 30 VLT tests (note: VST and VLT are two publicly available internet-based tests on receptive vocabulary knowledge).

With third ratings (where the first two independent, blind-rating raters disagreed) included, the team of 20 PLaCE instructor-raters completed a total of 1139 ACE-In Listen & Repeat ratings, 1281 ACE-In Oral Reading ratings, and 1210 ACE-In Speaking & Listening ratings from August 2023 to April 2024.

Per request from the Office of Admissions, three pre-admissions candidates were accommodated with an ACE-In test for secondary screening of their academic speaking proficiency for college admission. We are very glad to see a candidate's college education dream come true as she was granted not just Purdue admission through this secondary screening, but she also won the inaugural Gilsdorf scholarship.

Celebrating 10 Years of Fostering International Leaps at Purdue through Language and Cultural Exchange

This year also marks PLaCE’s 10-year anniversary of supporting international students. Program highlights include:

  • Relocating to the 8th floor of Young Hall;
  • Hosting a Showcase Event attended by over 260 students, faculty, and staff across campus;
  • Aligning with the program’s administrative home CLA (including a new website, changing course prefixes from ENGL to SCLA, and connecting with Cornerstone);
  • Sending a bus of nearly 50 students and staff to Indianapolis for the Eclipse event on April 8, 2024. 

Outreach Language Development Programs

Nine undergraduate students from the Nexo Global Rural program in Colombia participated in a 22-week Language and Cultural Exchange (LaCE) course taught by a PLaCE Senior Lecturer to support the cohort's sociocultural, language, academic, and research experiences throughout their internship at Purdue. 

A second cohort of six Colombian undergraduate students is currently participating in the same program and will complete their research internship as well as the LaCE course by August 2024. 

Staff Achievements

This year, two book chapters were published about the PLaCE program, including its curricula, students, and assessments.

PLaCE staff gave a total of 9 academic presentations at university-level, regional, national, or international conferences or showcase events. These contributed to the new total of 70 presentations and publications about PLaCE since program establishment.

A presentation given by Haiyan Li, Minsun Kim, Ty Climer, & Lixia Cheng with the title, "Instructor-Guided ChatGPT Training for ESL Academic Writing" won the "Innovation Hub Award for Innovative Uses of Generative AI" at the inaugural Festival of Teaching and Learning organized by Purdue's Honors College. 

Lixia Cheng was one of the two awardees of the Brightspace Innovation Program grant for the award phase of January 2023–December 2024.