As the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures (MLL) looks back over the 2024-25 academic year, we are struck by the variety and dynamism of the activities and accomplishments. A unifying theme is our mission to prepare our students to be informed, confident, culturally aware, linguistically versatile global citizens with the skills to contribute in a wide variety of capacities. The MLL faculty’s unwavering dedication to teaching, research and service — with an eye toward innovation and an interest in technological advancements in education — was critical to advancing that mission. What follows is a sampling of departmental highlights for the year.
Professor Alla Kourova leads Russian Tea Hour
This year, we welcomed six new faculty members teaching Spanish, French, Japanese and Korean, and celebrated the promotion of one faculty member to Associate Instructor. Our faculty were recognized by a number of UCF awards, including three Research Incentive Awards, a Teaching Incentive Award and two College of Arts and Humanities Excellence in Teaching awards. Two members of the MLL administrative team were honored for 25 and 35 years of dedicated service. A notable external grant went to Christina Torres, who received a prestigious Fulbright Early Career/Post-Doctoral Scholar Award that allowed her to spend the year on a research project in Spain. While there, she focused on telecollaborative language teacher training, cultivating international collaboration in the process. MLL faculty were also engaged in new and ongoing grant activity funded by over $3.1 million from entities including the U.S. Department of Education and Florida Humanities. Special recognition goes to Alla Kourova’s STARTALK Russian program, culminating ten years of support from the National Security Agency. This year, the program included a residential summer immersion that continued as online learning for the year, welcoming students from fifteen states in an intensive exploration of Russian language and culture.
MLL faculty were active in scholarship, publishing five books and twenty-two articles and book chapters, while presenting their work at conferences in the U.S. and abroad. MLL faculty and students also undertook compelling interdisciplinary research, which included work with students in Computer Science to create an AI-powered pronunciation tool for Spanish. Another faculty member mentored a student in the creation of a language acquisition game for Japanese. The game went on to be used in Japanese classes, and also to win an award at the annual UCF Student Scholar Symposium. MLL faculty also continued to pursue their interests in educational technologies and innovations, actively exploring the use of AI and digital tools in the classroom. Faculty produced sophisticated and accessible instructional videos, created digital immersion experiences using 360-degree camera technology, and actively pursued new knowledge through the Florida Online Innovation Summit and countless workshops on AI in pedagogy.
We are gratified by our students’ successes as well. Students pursued ten different languages, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), and Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies. Opportunities to learn outside the classroom were also plentiful at regular gatherings such as the Café Francophone, Klub Kréole events, Russian Tea Hours, La Mesa de Español and Bate Papo for Portuguese. Virtual exchanges connected UCF students with peers in Japan, France, Spain, Guatemala and Russia, fostering cross-cultural dialogue. Further afield, dozens of students took part in MLL’s summer 2024 study abroad programs in Florence, Berlin, Paris, Azerbaijan and Barcelona. Students’ dedication to language study was affirmed by awards in outside events, including seven prizes in the Mid-Florida Speech and Skit contest in Japanese, and three in the Yevgeny Yevtushenko Poetry Recital contest in Russian, among other recognitions. This year, we also renewed our collaboration with the Peace Corps to offer fellowships to Returning Peace Corps Volunteers, bringing students with real-world experience into our TESOL graduate program.
Luca Vullo demonstrates Italian body language
A focal point for the department this year was outreach and community engagement, both locally and abroad. The department hosted vibrant public events such as the Korean Arirang Festival, a celebration of Korean culture through music and dance performances, K-Pop, fashion and a Taekwon-do demonstration, all organized in collaboration with the Orlando Korean Culture Center. Our Japanese faculty teamed with the Association of Florida Teachers of Japanese to host the Mid-Florida Speech and Skit Contest, with participants from a number of central Florida institutions. Luca Vullo, the internationally recognized “Ambassador of Italian Gestures,” entertained an audience at UCF Celebrates the Arts, as he taught the meaning of Italian body language in a performance sponsored by the Neil Euliano Endowed Chair in Italian Studies. We celebrated our fourth Latin American/Latinx Film festival, a week-long, grant-funded interdepartmental collaboration that included panel discussions and guest speakers along with movie screenings. More than a dozen faculty members continued our annual tradition of “Language Speed Dating” during International Week, allowing students and the community to sample language learning in a festive way. Throughout the year, faculty and students also brought language learning into the community through free language classes held at a local library, cultural exchanges with local seniors, and a popular alumni podcast series, “Futures in Languages,” which added fourteen new episodes this year.
Erin Laureano instructs students during Language Speed Dating
One final acknowledgement will sum up much of the spirit of MLL. In Fall 2024, Kacie Tartt, Senior Instructor of Spanish, was nominated by four of her students for an Academic Success Partner of the Game award for her dedication to supporting student-athletes in their academic development. The UCF football players were in Tartt’s online Spanish class, and the recognition was celebrated at a UCF home football game. What makes this so special is that Tartt, even in the virtual environment of a web-based course, was able to cultivate a community of learners, make a true connection, and bring out the best in her students. This is just one example of what the scholar/teachers in MLL strive to do every day.
In summary, 2024-25 has been another year of active engagement in the teaching, research and promotion of languages and cultures that span the globe. By integrating technology, providing real-world opportunities for linguistic and cultural exchange and highlighting the importance of these skills in today’s professional world, our faculty work to enrich the student learning experience and opportunities for the future. In today’s globalized market and ever more complex cultural landscape, this enterprise is more critical and more rewarding than ever.
