Halloween is here!

Saturday is Halloween, and people around the United States and indeed the world will celebrate by carving jack-o-lanterns, bobbing for apples, donning costumes, and trick-or-treating. Here, the celebrating has already begun. Few cultures embrace Halloween as heartily as that of the U.S., and A.C.E. students in Seattle and Bozeman always have a good time our annual Halloween parties. This past Sunday, a group of A.C.E. students visited a local corn maze and pumpkin patch (see picture). Such a cultural phenomenon provides great material for English teachers and students, and so here we share a few great online resources. Have a Happy Halloween!

Here is a great matching game to learn Halloween vocab.
Now, test your newly acquired Halloween vocab with this short quiz.
This site has a bevy of Halloween related readings and lesson plans specially designed for English language learners.

NAFSA Region 1 Conference, 2009

By Shirley Henderson at A.C.E.–Wednesday through Friday of last week, NAFSA Region 1 had its annual meeting in Vancouver, Washington. The A.C.E. attendees were A.C.E.’s Seattle Language Institute Director, Sally Thomas and me, the Enrollment Services Manager.

The regional NAFSA meetings provide great opportunities for networking as well as gaining pertinent information regarding new regulations and local trends.

A.C.E. Announces Study Abroad to Spain, Italy, and Ireland

A.C.E. is pleased to announce the creation of three Academic Study Abroad Programs to begin next summer. These will be credit-based courses and short term experiences abroad to focus on various dimensions of “making the world your community”, introducing American students to lesser-known regions, contexts, and cultures, with an eye to overcoming human barriers and conflict. The programs to Spain and Italy will be led by Dr. Alberto Ferreiro, a professor of European History at Seattle Pacific University where he has taught since 1986. He is also a summer Visiting Professor/Lecturer at the University of Salamanca and Founder-Director of the Centro Fray Luis de León. The program to Northern Ireland will be led by Dr. Nancy Burgoyne, professor of Political Science at Seattle University.

Iraqi Student Exchange Gaining Visibility

Back in August, we posted this story about the formation of an Iraqi Scholarship fund to send 10,000 students a year to the U.S. and U.K. (For more back story, read this story at Inside Higher Ed. Well, we bring it up again today because earlier this month J.P. Schnapper-Casteras, former fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and founder of the Stanford-Iraq Student Exchange wrote this article for the Washington Post. It specifically outlines what still needs to be done to ensure a strong, healthy, and mutually beneficial relationship between academic institutions in Iraq and the United States.

The major bullet points include prioritizing and facilitating visas for Iraqi students, broadening the coalition of American universities receiving Iraqi students in order to reduce tuition rates, and supporting the American University in Iraq. But don’t take our word for it–read the story yourself.

On a related note, Iraqi schools’ curricula have recently received a major overhaul. You can read the fascinating details, or listen to the story, over at npr.com.

Former ACEr Featured for Work at Homeless Shelter

Looking sharp, Colin. A.C.E. Staff at Halloween Party

Colin Knight, former Program Coordinator for the Language Institute at SPU, last month followed his heart to Rising Out Of The Shadows (ROOTS) shelter in the University District where he works as a Volunteer Coordinator. The Daily of the University of Washington recently conducted an interview with Colin while writing a story on the shelter and the services it provides to homeless youth in Seattle.

You can read the whole story over here, as well as see what a striking figure Colin cuts in black. Congrats to Colin, and keep up all the good work!