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When she keynoted the PSMLA annual conference in the fall of 2002, Dr. Eileen Glisan used a U.S. Marine Corps training simulation that required recruits to choose one of two, mutually exclusive options to resolve a battlefield challenge. The correct response to the question "Which of these is the right option?" was "Both of them." Recruits were expected to recognize and accept that they would be asked to, and would, do the impossible. As Dr. Glisan pointed out, we have to say "yes to both" on many issues our profession faces: Should we focus on K-8 programs or on teacher certification? Language or literature? Improving the required sequence or the major? Choose a language for its appeal to students or for its utility in life beyond the classroom?
Over the years, Eileen Glisan has consistently demonstrated her professional commitment to doing the impossible by saying "yes to both"! As her colleagues in the field, we may not be surprised by the fact that she is a full professor at IUP (where in addition to her course load, she directs the secondary education/Spanish program and supervises student teaching), a certified Oral Proficiency Interviewer, a member of the Foreign Language Annals Editorial Board, and ACTFL/NCATE reviewer and member of the Review Report Audit Team (having served as the profession's representative to NCATE for six years), and the co-author, with Judith Shrum, of the most widely used foreign language methods textbook in the country - now in its third edition. We may have had the privilege of attending one of the hundreds of workshops and sessions she has presented at the local, state, regional, national, and international levels. We may use Enlaces, her intermediate Spanish textbook (also co-authored with Judith Shrum) in our classrooms. We may have benefited from reading one of the dozens of articles or chapters she has penned on topics in her preferred areas of research (proficiency-oriented instruction, standards-based teaching, proficiency assessment, listening comprehension, and teacher preparation) in edited books and scholarly journals such as The Modern Language Journal, Foreign Language Annals, The Canadian Modern Language Review, Hispania, and The ADFL Bulletin. Her publications treat topics ranging from a survey of principals and guidance counselors to immersion experiences for teachers to "decrying" No Child Left Behind - and finally, to this year's Freeman Award-winning article on Integrated Performance Assessment (see below)! But we probably don't realize that she has also served on over 20 committees at IUP, at both the departmental and the university level. We may not know that she has also consulted on multiple, national grant applications. We may have forgotten that she helped design the professional development component of the standards effort and that she directed the Foreign Language and International Studies for Elementary Teaching (FLISET) Program at IUP.
We applauded Dr. Glisan heartily when she was honored with the ACTFL/NYSAFLT Anthony Papalia Award for excellence in teacher education, but she was equally thrilled with the Educator of the Year Award from the Pennsylvania State Modern Language Association. She was recognized by NCATE for outstanding service, but also by IUP for her outstanding record of research, teaching and service.
Those of us in Pennsylvania recall Eileen Glisan's significant contributions to our state through her presidency of PSMLA, her directorship of the original World Language Standards Task Force in the late 1990s, her work on the Teacher Education Program Standards for Foreign Languages, and so much more. As one of her Pennsylvania colleagues, Frank Mulhern, wrote: "Eileen embodies the descriptor 'distinguished service and leadership' to the profession. (…) [She] reaches and impacts the work of many student teachers who are the future of our work. I am in awe of her work ethic, her professionalism and her commitment to any and all projects which she undertakes. She has been a role model to me at many points of my career. From her I have learned the meaning of dedication to excellence, the importance of being proactive, and the value of an ethical approach to all that one does. At many parts of my life, I have found her to be a mentor - as an organization leader, as a supervisor and as a methods instructor. Yet, my best memories of Eileen are as a friend - I have seen her care, kindness, humor and other things to which others may not have access. I have valued many chats - often with her, Bonnie & Rick - over coffee, dinners… even an occasional drink. When we were both active in PSMLA we chuckled over early morning e-mail exchanges when all others were probably sleeping."
Eileen Glisan has also left an indelible and positive impact on the Northeast Conference. As Chair of the 1997 conference, she was among the first to accept the challenge of creating a professional development video to accompany the Reports volume for that year, each of whose chapters was written by a collaborative team (including one from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics!). She served on almost every Board committee, initiating new procedures and policies that still serve us well. She authored two chapters for Reports volumes, one in 1991 and the second ten years later.
It is worth wondering when she found the time! Her long-time friend and co-author, Judith Shrum, writes: "In the mid 1980's, Stan Galek, the acquisitions editor for Heinle and Heinle, came to Blacksburg to visit me and talk about writing a Spanish textbook. He had read some articles of mine and he told me about a 'woman in Pittsburgh who was looking for a co-author'. It was late October, I was going home to visit my parents in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania - just 30 minutes from Eileen's house so I called her and we made arrangements to meet. I'll never forget that snowy day in December when I knocked on her door and said "Hi, I'm your new co-author." We sat down at her big dining room table and shared ideas - she had had two co-authors before me. One had become a missionary and the other had left the country. Fortunately my ideas fit into the chapter she had already started, and thus began an association of nearly 20 years. Our first book was Enlaces, an intermediate college level text that used authentic listening materials. When the first edition came out, Eileen also produced a new addition to her family when Nina was born. The second edition of Enlaces saw the arrival of her son Alex. We had both long revered Alice Omaggio Hadley, and tried to work out an arrangement to write a workbook to accompany her book. Instead she suggested we write our own - so we did. In 3 months. The second edition took 6 months, and the third edition took 8 months. We can't figure out how we wrote books, and she built her family, and why it takes us so much longer now than it did then! We've laughed, cried, planned, revised, ranted, raved, and thoroughly supported each other in those two decades of professional and personal collaboration. What would life be without Eileen Glisan!?"
Eileen, we salute and honor you for a record of leadership and service that has changed the face of foreign language education at the national level but that has never deviated from a focus on the individual student, the department, the local collaborative, the state or regional association. You do the impossible and it inspires all of us to aim for the stars!
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