Dr. Eileen Glisan, professor of Spanish at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, has been elected president-elect of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

In this position, Glisan begins a three-year term on the board of directors executive committee and will serve as council president in 2010.

The council includes more than 12,000 language professionals from all levels of education and representing all languages. The association is designed to provide members with a wide variety of professional development opportunities, including training and certification programs.

In addition to teaching Spanish, Spanish applied linguistics, and teaching methodology courses at IUP, Glisan coordinates the university's program for teachers of Spanish for kindergarten through grade 12.

Glisan received the IUP University Professorship Award for 2000-2001, and she was the Distinguished University Professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs in 2004-2005.

Glisan is certified by the council as an oral proficiency tester of Spanish. She is co-author of “Teachers Handbook: Contextualized Language Instruction,” a teaching methodology text, and she has authored many articles in professional journals, including “The Modern Language Journal,” “Foreign Language Annals,” “Language Learning” and “The Canadian Modern Language Review.” She is a frequent presenter at local, state, regional and national conferences and conducts in-service workshops for school districts and universities throughout the country.

Glisan has served in a number of leadership roles in professional organizations, including as chair of the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in 1997 and president of Pennsylvania State Modern Language Association from 1992 to 1994. She co-directed the development of the ACTFL/NCATE Program Standards for the Preparation of Foreign Language Teachers, approved by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education in 2002, and she served as a member of the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Consortium Foreign Language Committee, which drafted initial licensing standards for foreign language teachers in 2002.

Glisan also has served on both the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education audit team and conducts training workshops for new program reviewers at the annual American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Convention. She was a member of the Foreign Language Annals editorial board from 2001-2008.

Prior to her work at IUP, she taught Spanish at the middle and high school levels.