Welcome Back SWALLT! As a newcomer to the West, I find myself now the Language Laboratory Coordinator at CSU Monterey Bay. I came here in February 2000 from the University of Minnesota where I studied ESL and Scandinavian Languages and Literature, and I am still developing anecdotes about adjusting to the cold summers and warm winters here on the Central Coast. At UMN, I had the opportunity to work in the CLA Language Center for four years. Of course, there we also had cold summers and warm winters, but those were due mostly to problems in the HVAC systems! Beyond my experience as a student in Japanese, Icelandic and Spanish, I have also worked as a teacher of Swedish, ESL and EFL at the Junior High, university and community education levels.

Here at CSUMB I have the opportunity to direct the operations and direction of the Language Lab. It is a service unit for the Institute for World Languages and Cultures where five languages are taught: American Sign Language, Chinese, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. We have two computer labs: one 17-station Mac lab and one 25-station PC lab to serve the language programs. The PC lab is a networked Tandberg digital language lab, and we are upgrading the hardware in that lab during Summer 2002. The Mac lab is also getting a facelift to run the new iMac hardware. Because the lab was installed in 1998, we have little of the analog materials overhead and storage issues that other labs are still working with, but that also means we are challenged to digitize everything for use in our labs. We are also fortunate to have several other schools in the area interested in language learning and technology, such as the Defense Language Institute and Monterey Institute for International Studies, as well as several community colleges, and we strive to maintain a collaborative approach between the schools.

The IWLC at CSUMB also hosts the DigitalStream conference on Emerging Technologies in Teaching Languages and Cultures each spring during the campus break. Tandberg Educational has been a primary sponsor since the first year and I am very pleased to see that SWALLT has chosen to co-locate our springtime meeting with DigitalStream. When I first attended the DigitalStream conference soon after my arrival here, it felt much like an MWALL or other IALL-type organization conference with strong numbers of lab directors and technology-interested faculty who were in attendance. LeeAnn Stone, too saw the connection and encouraged the two groups to connect. This year our theme is "Language on the Edge" and I hope all of you will submit a proposal or at least attend the conference. We will feature several "SWALLT-approved" presentations that have come up from the SWALLT membership as part of the conference offerings. It's been a good move to the West, and I look forward to meeting the other SWALLT members this fall in Reno or at DigitalStream next spring so we can continue to grow and provide support to each other as we seek to support language learning with technology.

Gus Leonard
CSU Monterey Bay