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Program Summary AY24-25

Foundational Credit Courses

PLaCE offers two courses for undergraduate international students to equip them with the academic, linguistic, and cultural competencies needed to participate in university life and to compete for graduate school and employment opportunities:

  • SCLA 110: Language and Cultural Exchange I: Self in Context
  • SCLA 111: Language and Cultural Exchange II: Texts and Contexts

More directly, these courses prepare students for the Cornerstone sequence of courses (SCLA 101 and 102).

In Academic Year 2024–25, PLaCE enrolled a total of 419 students in 36 sections of SCLA 110 and 284 students in 23 sections of SCLA 111, across West Lafayette and Indianapolis. Fall 2024 marked the first semester that PLaCE had offered SCLA 110 at Indianapolis.

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.

Non-Credit Short Courses, Workshops, & Conversation Clubs

From June 2024 to May 2025, a total of 451 international graduate students, undergraduate students, and visiting scholars voluntarily enrolled in an average of about 2.5 PLaCE Short Courses, Workshops, or Conversation Clubs per student.

The total number of registrations across the year was 1137, including 239 registrations for 30 Short Courses, 683 registrations for 64 Workshops, and 215 registrations for 12 Conversation Clubs. The Short Courses and Workshops were offered in a mix of online and in-person formats, whereas the Conversation Clubs were conducted entirely in person.

Notably, Senior Lecturer Dr. Sorell’s short course—based on SCLA 110 and 111 field trips—proved so popular that a group of students, under his mentorship, took the initiative to establish a campus-wide student organization: the Campus Connection Club. 

Language Testing for Program Evaluation and Course Placement

From June 2024 to April 2025, we administered a total of 584 ACE-In tests, including one test to accommodate a pre-admissions candidate as per request from the Undergraduate International Admissions Office. PLaCE staff also proctored 284 VST tests. The ACE-In is our locally developed and locally rated internet-based academic English proficiency test, whereas the VST is a publicly available internet-based test on receptive vocabulary knowledge.

Including third ratings (where the first two independent, blind-rating raters disagreed), the team of 19 PLaCE instructor-raters completed a total of 1341 ACE-In Listen & Repeat ratings, 1764 ACE-In Oral Reading ratings, and 1642 ACE-In Speaking & Listening ratings.

Student and Staff Accomplishments

For more details, please visit the PLaCE News and Events page.

  • Under SCLA 111 instructor's mentorship, five teams totalling 15 international undergraduate students presented their AI-related SCLA 111 course projects at the 2025 Spring Undergraduate Research Conference, with one team earning an overall score above the conference average.
  • Under the mentorship of two PLaCE senior lecturers, PLaCE students initiated and established two new student organizations: the Campus Connection Club at Purdue West Lafayette and the Malaysian Student Association at Purdue Indianapolis.
  • As one of two teams awarded the 2024 "Innovation Hub Award for Innovative Uses of Generative AI", the PLaCE team of Li, Kim, Climer, & Cheng was honored at the September 26, 2024 Celebration of Teaching Excellence, hosted by the Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning to recognize Purdue’s university-level teaching award winners.
  • PLaCE Lecturer Dr. Haiyan Li was selected as a 2025 Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) Fellow by the Center for Instructional Excellence. She also received a Seed Grant from the Center for Intercultural Learning, Mentoring, Assessment, and Research (CILMAR). 
  • 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. 
  • PLaCE Director Dr. Matthew Allen was invited to lead a professional development workshop at UMass Boston. The title of his workshop was What Does Success Look Like in an ESL Program?
  • 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 supporting AI-assisted academic writing in wartime Ukraine.
  • PLaCE Senior Lecturer Hannah Bush implemented a Language and Cultural Exchange Program for Educators during her professional learning experience in Colombia in summer 2024.
  • PLaCE staff delivered a total of 10 academic presentations at university-level, regional, national, and international conferences or showcase events, and published one encyclopedia entry. These contributions bring the total number of PLaCE-related presentations and publications to 81 since PLaCE's inception in 2014.
  • For the second consecutive year, two PLaCE instructor teams were invited to present their teaching and curriculum innovations at the Festival of Teaching and Learning hosted by the John Martinson Honors College.
  • PLaCE was invited to present at the Undergraduate Research and Mentoring Program Showcase in mid-May 2025, where it spotlighted SCLA 111 course projects recently featured at Purdue’s Spring 2025 Undergraduate Research Conference.
  • Seven Lecturers have been promoted to Senior Lecturers, effective July 1, 2025: Armand Affricano, Heejeon Bras, Charles Brown, Margaret Hass, Minsun Kim, David Sparks, and Sabina Zeynalova.