June 2024 

Welcome from your SIG Chair! As your elected officers, we look forward to serving you and the field over the next two years!

First, thank you for those who have already volunteered to serve as reviewers for the 2025 AERA Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado! We are seeking additional volunteers to serve as reviewers. This is a great way to get involved in the SIG and a valuable service opportunity, especially for early career scholars. We encourage any SIG members to volunteer as your expertise and feedback really helps shape the content year-to-year. Depending on the volume of submissions, reviewers can expect anywhere from 5-10 (it cannot exceed 10!) submissions to review. These reviews will take place during a 3-week period (August-September).

If you are a current member, to sign-up, to volunteer, please visit www.aera.net, sign into your account, click on “My AERA”, and scroll down to click “2025 AERA Annual Meeting – Volunteer to be a Reviewer”. From there, under “General Menu”, you will complete a short form that our program chair will use to help assign relevant submissions to you. Make sure once you submit the form you also selected the ALAE SIG from the list of reviewer options. Please be sure to indicate your area(s) of expertise and interest so our new Program Chair, Dr. Amy Pickard can match you with appropriate proposals.

Second, the call for proposals for the 2025 AERA Annual Meeting is now open (submissions due July 26, 2024) and we highly encourage submissions to the SIG. Submissions can be more traditional symposia, roundtable presentations, and posters and we also have had some very exciting workshops and an off-site visit to an adult education program in Philadelphia at the last annual meeting, which was also a great way to get to know other SIG members.

Finally, we want to let you know that we will be sending out monthly updates/information (e.g., job ads, relevant grant proposal calls, and anything anyone wants to share). You will also see job ads and relevant grant calls posted to our ALAE SIG webpage (https://www.aera.net/SIG004/Adult-Literacy-Adult-Education-SIG-4). We invite everyone in the SIG to e-mail us (etighe@gsu.edu) something special that happened in the past month related to their work. Please share big things - like being awarded a large grant, an appointment as a journal editor or editor of a book, a call for manuscripts, or a call for a job. Also, please consider sharing smaller things like an excellent article or a question for the group you would like to share.