December 2019 News from CEA
Message from Richard McDorman, 2019 Commission Chair
2019 was a year of both stability and change for CEA. As we celebrated CEA’s twentieth year, I was delighted to see so many friends of CEA and colleagues in the field at our anniversary receptions held at TESOL in Atlanta and the EnglishUSA IEP Stakeholders Conference in Washington, D.C. I would like to personally thank all those who took the time to participate in these events, as well as our third reception held at the CEA offices in Alexandria, which I was unable to attend but which Commissioner Sherif Barsoum so ably officiated. This year CEA also selected its new Executive Director, Heidi Vellenga, PhD, who will assume the duties of that office on February 1 of next year as outgoing Executive Director Mary Reeves, PhD, begins a very well-deserved retirement. I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank Mary and Heidi, as well as the entire CEA staff, for their extraordinary collegiality, cooperation and skill as I have worked with them during these past four years as a Commissioner and this past year in particular as Chair. CEA and its constituents are extremely fortunate to have such an excellent team of professionals guiding the agency, which is a great benefit to accredited sites as well as the field at large.
As my year as Chair of the Commission comes to an end, I would also like to thank my Commission colleagues for their commitment to service and carrying out CEA’s mission and values, along with the dozens of volunteer peer reviewers without whose work and dedication CEA would not be able to operate as a high-functioning specialized accreditor. CEA accredits a wide variety of types of programs and institutions, both in the United States and abroad. While CEA’s constituents are indeed extremely diverse, both academically and geographically, they all share the same commitment to upholding the CEA Standards, which unite CEA’s nearly 350 accredited sites in a common goal of achieving excellence in the field of English language teaching and administration.
I echo the sentiments of the Commission Chairs who have come before me when I say that serving as Chair has been the most rewarding and significant experience of my professional career. It has been a great honor and privilege to lead the Commission this past year, and I look forward to watching CEA and the sites it accredits continue to thrive in the years to come.
Richard McDorman
2019 Commission Chair
