As leaders who oversee multiple courses and instructional levels, language program administrators (LPA) are accustomed to viewing language education from a broad, systems-oriented perspective. As such, they often engage in research that understands language learning and teaching as highly contextualized, complex, long-term developmental processes. With their unique administrative lens, LPAs have contributed over the years to important scholarship in curriculum design and articulation, teacher development and mentoring, and program assessment, among other areas (e.g., Allen & Negueruela-Azarola, 2010; Blyth, Bourns, & Magnan, 2020; Paesani & Barrette, 2005). This session explores the role of research in language program administration. What kinds of research do LPAs need to advance their work? And how can their unique interdisciplinary perspectives as administrators, mentors, and pedagogues advance scholarship in applied linguistics and education?

Three presentations share recent program innovations and discuss how LPA perspectives can help inform scholarship in areas of curriculum design and materials development. Following a short introduction to the session, each presenter group will have 17-18 minutes. The session will conclude with 15 minutes for audience participation.

Paper 1 describes a recent curriculum overhaul initiative of an undergraduate Spanish program that was prompted by recommendations from an external program review in 2019 and evolving circumstances in the presenters’ department (i.e., leadership rotation, changes to administrative compensation, reduced teaching loads, faculty hires, and a new graduate student instructor training system). The presenters show how a holistic, humanistic approach that tailored curriculum and operational systems to diverse student and faculty needs and sought continuous input and feedback from faculty throughout the process, helped students reach targeted proficiency levels in Spanish.

Paper 2 takes a data-driven approach to textbook selection and describes how a Spanish program convened an internal book evaluation committee made up of members of differing ranks to identify a textbook that could be used interchangeably between face-to-face and online modalities. Following Lord’s (2013) suggestions to combine predictive and retrospective approaches, the evaluation approach taken here involved several steps, including development of evaluation rubrics, discussions with publishers, creation and analyses of survey and focus group data, and a modified situational SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis for each textbook (Christison & Stoller, 2012). In producing detailed SWOT analyses aligned to the department’s teaching mission, the program was able to choose an appropriate textbook that would allow learners to move between face-to-face and online instructional contexts seamlessly.

Paper 3 also presents a textbook selection process, but from the perspective of students. While some textbook evaluation research has performed student satisfaction survey post-selection (Czerwionka & Gorokhovsky, 2015), student involvement in the actual assessment process has been largely missing from this work. To fill that gap, this presentation describes how a student of intensive introductory French took on initial evaluation of beginning and intermediate L2 French textbooks as part of coursework for a research methods course taught by the LPA. Following this work, a formal textbook evaluation committee consisting of the LPA, instructors, and graduate student instructors integrated the student’s evaluation into their own reviews. The presentation discusses how LPAs’ work can be enhance by including student perspectives in curriculum development, such as a textbook review process.

A key theme in this session on theorizing LPA work is the importance of collaboration among multiple stakeholders (faculty, students, and administrators) to develop undergraduate curricula and build learning communities of practice. Each presentation highlights how the inclusion of diverse perspectives is essential to enacting meaningful change in university language programs.