Thank you to all presenters and participants, and to the conference sponsors, for making the 8th International Immersion 2022 a great success!
Stay tuned for updates on the 9th International Conference projected for 2024.
Keynote
Jose Enriquez
Jose is an immigrant who was born in El Salvador and grew up in East L.A. He attributes much of his success to his hard-working mother who sacrificed everything to give him and his siblings a better life. He graduated from John Glenn H.S. in L.A. with a full ride scholarship to wrestle at Brigham Young University where he obtained 3 degrees: BA in Secondary Education Spanish, ESL. Masters in Educational Leadership, and a PhD in Educational Leadership. His previous positions include; Coordinator of Title III and Special Programs at the Utah State Office of Education, Director of Diversity for Alpine School District, served 11 years in both Alpine and Provo school districts as an Assistant Principal, and taught Spanish for 3 years prior to that. He was appointed a commissioner on volunteerism by Lieutenant Governor Bell’s Utah Commission on Volunteers in 2010, and as a commissioner to the office Multicultural Affairs by Governor Herbert, 2012. Serves on the Board of Directors United Way of Salt Lake and Board of Directors of Intermountain Community Care Foundation and Granite Education Board of Directors .Currently, Jose is living his dream as the full time CEO of Latinos in Action (LIA), a non-profit he built from the ground up since 2001, and which officially became a non-profit organization in 2010. LIA is currently implemented over 300 schools across 14 states. LIA’s mission is to empower Latino youth to lead and strengthen their communities through culturally responsive social emotional learning , college and career readiness, and leadership. In 2014, LIA was honored as a Bright Spot by the White House Center for Excellence in Hispanic Education. Latinos in Action was recently recognized by Governor Herbert and Envision Utah and given the Common Good Award for Excellence in Educational programming. Jose is the father of 6 children; 4 girls and two boys and 1 grandson.
Featured Speakers
Mary Ann Villarreal
As the inaugural vice president for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the University of Utah, Dr. Mary Ann Villarreal provides leadership and strategic oversight of diversity and inclusion initiatives across the University’s academic and health sciences campuses.
Since her arrival in 2019, Villarreal has been steadfast in growing the EDI division to meet the needs of the University through innovative and impactful programs. She quickly established One U Thriving as a platform that unites the division’s work across the campus and the EDI Strategy Council that will ensure alignment with the University’s strategic plan.
Prior to her current role, Dr. Villarreal served as the associate vice president of strategic initiatives at California State University, Fullerton; the associate dean at Colorado Women’s College at the University of Denver; an assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado, Boulder; and an instructor as well as an assistant professor of history and ethnic studies at the University of Utah. She has authored articles and book chapters, and her book Listening to Rosita: The Business of Tejana Music and Culture, 1930 – 1955, which won the South Texas College Américo Paredes Book Award.
Sydnee Dickson
Sydnee Dickson has been serving as Utah State Superintendent of Public Instruction since June of 2016 and served as interim state superintendent for six months prior to that. She has nearly 10 years of experience working in the office of the Utah State Board of Education (USBE). Prior to that Dickson worked in various counseling, teaching, and leadership capacities in the Davis, Granite and Murray school districts for 27 years. She holds an Ed.D. degree in Education Leadership and Policy from the University of Utah and a master of education degree from Brigham Young University in educational leadership and administration. Her bachelor’s degree in elementary education and teaching is from Utah State University.
Rhonda Broussard
Rhonda Broussard founded Beloved Community to create sustainable paths to regional economic equity. Beloved Community works at the nexus of Equity in Schools, Equity at Work, and Equity at Home. Rhonda has been a leader in diversity and international education initiatives throughout her career. Previously, Rhonda founded a network of language immersion and IB world authorized schools, was a National Board Certified Teacher and taught in public schools in drop-out recovery, college access, working class, immigrant, and affluent school communities. Rhonda is a Pahara-Aspen Fellow and an Eisenhower Fellow, where she studied minority language education policies and teacher education in Finland and New Zealand. Rhonda is the author of the blog One Good Question: How Countries, Communities, and Schools Prepare Youth for Global Citizenship. She holds a BA in French and Secondary Education from Washington University in St. Louis and an MA in French Studies from The Institute of French Studies at NYU. She and her bilingual family live in her native Louisiana.
Tara Fortune
Dr. Tara Fortune is an independent consultant specializing in strategic planning and support for dual language and immersion education. For over twenty years she served as Director of the Immersion Research and Professional Development Project at the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA), University of Minnesota. In this role she partnered with veteran practitioners and leading immersion researchers to offer professional learning experiences that bridge research and practice. Her work has involved schools, districts, state agencies, universities, and non-profit organizations throughout the U.S. and abroad. Fortune's publications include two co-edited research volumes on immersion education, a research-to-practice handbook on struggling immersion learners, and articles in journals such as Foreign Language Annals, Modern Language Journal, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, and the Journal of Content-Based and Immersion Education. In 2016 she received the U.S. Paul Pimsleur Award for Research in Foreign Language Education. Current projects include immersion program evaluation, family education and engagement curriculum development for indigenous revitalization immersion education, and professional learning and program support to support immersion learners who struggle with language and learning difficulties.
Roy Lyster
Roy Lyster is Professor Emeritus of Second Language Education at McGill University. His research examines content-based second language instruction and the effects of instructional interventions designed to counterbalance form-focused and content-based approaches. His research interests also include professional development and collaboration among teachers for the purpose of integrated language learning and biliteracy development. He was corecipient with colleague Leila Ranta of the 1998 Paul Pimsleur Award for Research in Foreign Language Education and was presented the Robert Roy Award by the Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers in 2017. He was co-president then president of the Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics from 2004 to 2008. He is author of a module called Content- Based Language Teaching published by Routledge in 2018, and three books: Learning and Teaching Languages Through Contentpublished by Benjamins in 2007, Vers une approche intégrée en immersionpublished by CEC Publishing in 2016, and Scaffolding language development in immersion and dual language classrooms(with D. J. Tedick) published by Routledge in 2020.
Myriam Met
In her career as an educator, Dr. Myriam (Mimi) Met has been a foreign language teacher, district supervisor, and acting director of the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland. She currently consults with schools, districts, state offices, universities and private agencies on strategic planning and support for immersion programs.
Dr. Met worked closely with the Utah State Office of Education to plan and implement the state’s Dual Language Immersion initiative. In addition to her work with Utah, Dr. Met was involved with the statewide immersion initiatives in Delaware and Georgia. She has worked with more than 150 Dual Language Immersion programs in and beyond the United States, in large school systems such as Los Angeles, New York City, Portland