Dear InField/CoLang Participants and other SSILA members,
Greetings from Adrienne Tsikewa and Carly Tex, the co-conveners for CoLang 2023-2024 Advisory Circle. On behalf of the Advisory Circle, we are formally soliciting expressions of interest for hosting the 2026 Institute on Collaborative Language Research (InField/CoLang). These should be a paragraph or two that briefly explain your interest in hosting the 2026 CoLang Institute, including some basic details about possible institutional support, the organizing committee, among other preliminary details. Please note that this is the 2nd call for expressions of interests.
Expressions of interest should be emailed to both the Co-Conveners at adrienne.tsikewa@gmail.com and carly@aicls.org by August 31, 2023. This info is also available online at https://www.colanginstitute.org/blog/feb062023.
After receiving expressions of interest, we will then invite more detailed proposals for hosting the 2026 CoLang Institute. These should take the form of a two-to-three page proposal that (1) presents the qualifications of the proposed Local Organizer(s); (2) outlines any Institute-particular themes or approaches; (3) presents possible fundraising strategies and sources of internal/institutional support, including participant scholarships (fundraising, evaluating applications and administering), and (4) states the likely available resources for personnel, housing, and classroom and technology support. One additional page can be added to list any already-known funding or in-kind contributions.
All proposals received by that date will be considered by the Advisory Circle. The Advisory Circle may request additional information. Due to the nature of the event, priority is given to a local organizing committee whose members (at least one) have participated in earlier CoLang Institutes. If selected, the Local Organizers(s) will head the Local Organizing Committee and will work closely with the Advisory Circle to develop themes, course content, and instructors. CoLang has an established partnership with the Linguistics Society of America (LSA) and has worked closely together with the Endangered Language Fund (ELF), and the Local Organizers(s) and Local Organizing Committee will also work with the LSA and potentially with ELF. The duties of the Local Organizing Committee are outlined in this paragraph from the Charter:
b. Local Organizing Committee
A given year’s Institute is organized and run by a Local Organizing Committee. The committee has the primary responsibility for that Institute. These responsibilities include major fundraising, advertising, all Institute administration including faculty and speaker contracts and payments, arranging IRB approval and dealing with issues of informed consent for the practicum (and elsewhere, if required), arranging venues, travel and visas, and accommodations for all participants, as well as volunteer staffing, airport transfers, social events, evaluation, and follow up reporting, and any other routine things as necessary. Programmatic decisions are made with guidance from the Advisory Committee. The local committee consists of a minimum of two members. One or more external members of the organizing committee might also be appointed, at the discretion of the local committee. When appropriate or feasible, one or more members of the Local Organizing Committee should be representatives from local Indigenous communities. The Local Organizing Committee may delegate particular organizing roles to others (e.g., talks, organization of evening and weekend activities, coordination of multi-instructor workshops, etc.).
The 2018 Institute was hosted by Aaron George Broadwell at the University of Florida at Gainesville. The UF Gainesville proposal is available from the co-conveners upon request. The 2022 Institute was hosted by Susan Penfield and Mizuki Miyashita at the University of Montana.
We look forward to hearing from those of you interested in hosting in 2026 (and we encourage you to begin thinking about the possibility of hosting CoLang 2028). Please feel free to contact us if you have questions about hosting or the process of applying.
Adrienne Tsikewa and Carly Tex
Co-Conveners CoLang Advisory Circle