Promoting research and best practices that will improve the use of English in the emerging global knowledge economy of the 21st century

TIRF has just announced the competition for the 2010 Sheikh Nahayan Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships. The deadline for fellowship applications is September 30, 2010. For more information and application guidelines, click here.

Former TIRF Trustee Dr. Rick Jenks was recently honored in a ceremony at Florida State University, where the Center for Intensive English Studies was renamed in his honor. Follow the links to see a slide show of the ceremony and a write-up of the event.

The TIRF Board of Trustees is pleased to announce the election of three new Board members: Dr. Joe Lo Bianco, Dr. Jun Liu, and Ms. Ana Silvia Ramirez.

Dr. G. Richard Tucker, a member of the TIRF Board of Trustees, has been named interim dean for the Qatar campus of Carnegie Mellon University, effective August 1.

Currently, Professor Tucker serves as associate vice provost for education for the Carnegie Mellon Qatar campus. In this position, he works with various university department heads to make sure the academic and student life experiences at the Qatar campus remain an extension of the high quality programs in Pittsburgh.

After joining the Carnegie Mellon faculty in 1992, Dick became head of the Modern Languages Department in 1995 and held that post for 12 years. In 2003, he was named the Paul Mellon Professor of Applied Linguistics and in 2006 he was named a University Professor, the highest distinction a faculty member can achieve at Carnegie Mellon. Dick also received the university's Doherty Award for Sustained Contributions to Excellence in Education in 2007, as well as the James Alatis Award for Service to TESOL in 1998.

Dr. Muhammad Abdel Latif, one of the three 2008 TIRF Sheikh Nahayan Fellowship recipients, has received two prestigious awards. He received the 2009 Canadian Modern Language Review Best Graduate Student Paper: "Toward a New Process-Based Indicator for Measuring Writing Fluency: Evidence from L2 Writers' Think-Aloud Protocols." He was also selected by ACTFL (the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages) as the winner of the 2009 ACTFL-MLJ Emma Marie Birkmaier Award for Doctoral Dissertation Research in Foreign Language Education.