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PLaCE Program Summary AY25-26

Director: Matthew Allen, PhD         |       Associate Director of Evaluation: Lixia Cheng, PhD 
place@purdue.edu  |  https://cla.purdue.edu/place/  |  155 S. Grant St., 810 Young Hall, West Lafayette, IN 47907

About the Program

The PLaCE program builds bridges of understanding through language and cultural exchange. Our core mission is to support international students at Purdue as they develop the academic, linguistic, and cultural competencies needed to participate fully in university life and compete for graduate study and employment opportunities. To achieve this mission, PLaCE offers undergraduate courses (SCLA 11000 and 11100), English language testing, and non-credit support options through English Boost. PLaCE also collaborates with partners across the university to support internationalization efforts and to provide specialized English language and intercultural support for international students and groups. 

Foundational Credit Courses for First-Year Undergraduate International Students

PLaCE offers two 3-credit undergraduate courses:
  • SCLA 11000: Language and Cultural Exchange I: Self in Context
  • SCLA 11100: Language and Cultural Exchange II: Texts and Contexts

These courses help qualifying international undergraduate students to successfully transition to and navigate through their first year of university, and to prepare for the Cornerstone sequence of courses (SCLA 10100 and 10200) or other Written and Oral Communication courses. In Academic Year 2025–26, PLaCE enrolled 255 students in 21 sections of SCLA 110 and 192 students in 15 sections of SCLA 111, across West Lafayette and Indianapolis locations. Fall 2025 marks the second year that PLaCE has offered SCLA 110 and 111 courses at Indianapolis.

Anonymous course evaluations collected by Purdue's Center for Instructional Excellence (CIE) indicate consistently high levels of student satisfaction with instruction and course delivery in SCLA 110 and SCLA 111.

  • Fall 2025: Based on 164 survey responses from 262 enrolled students (62.6% response rate), item-rating means ranged from 4.55 to 4.79 across the 14 Likert-scale questions.
  • Spring 2026: Based on 136 survey responses from 185 enrolled students (73.5% response rate), item-rating means ranged from 4.44 to 4.74 across the same 14 Likert-scale questions. 

English Boost: Language Support through Coaching, Classes, and Conversation Clubs

PLaCE's English Boost initiative provides flexible, non-credit English language support to Purdue international students, with particular emphasis on graduate students. Introduced in Summer 2025, English Boost integrates one-to-one Language Coaching, Language Classes (Short Courses and Workshops), and Conversation Clubs into a unified support model designed to meet students' academic, professional, and personal language-development needs. During its first full academic year (2025–2026), 18 of PLaCE's 20 instructional staff members gained coaching experience, and all instructional staff completed training in coaching practices and the WCOnline client management platform.

Client feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, highlighting individualized instruction, practical communication support, and increased confidence in using English:

"Changing the programs into different formats, including 1:1 coaching, was very satisfying overall. It provided tailored English training while making me feel more responsible for participating in the class."
"Joining the English Boost coaching program has been a very valuable experience for me. The coaching has helped me become more aware of my pronunciation, pacing, and overall clarity when speaking English in professional and teaching settings. I found the sessions supportive and encouraging, and the practical feedback was especially helpful in building confidence and improving communication effectiveness."

In Fall 2025, a total of 1,395 English Boost appointments were completed, serving 208 WCOnline-registered Purdue international graduate students, undergraduate students, and visiting scholars.

During the 2025–2026 academic year, English Boost recorded:

  • 2,810 instructional appointments
  • 330 unique clients served
  • 967 client reports generated
  • Only 4.3% of appointments marked as missed

Conversation Clubs

  • 912 appointments
  • 141 unique participants
  • Four themed conversation club offerings in Spring 2026, achieving a 98.8% appointment fill rate

1:1 Language Coaching

  • 1,664 appointments
  • Coaching utilization increased from 31.7% in Fall 2025 to 56.9% in Spring 2026.
  • Repeat coaching became the norm, reflecting sustained student engagement and individualized language development.

Short Courses and Workshops

  • 234 appointments
  • Eight short course/workshop offerings across the academic year
  • Appointment fill rates of 90.8% in Fall 2025 and 71.5% in Spring 2026 

Language Testing for Program Evaluation and Course Exemption

To support its core educational mission, PLaCE administers the Assessment of College English—International (ACE-In), a locally developed and rated internet-based academic English proficiency test, as both a pre- and post-test for international undergraduate students enrolled in SCLA 110 and SCLA 111 courses. In addition to pre–post tracking of SCLA 110–111 students' proficiency gains for program evaluation (Cheng & Li, 2023), the ACE-In has also been used to inform high-stakes administrative decisions on exemption from SCLA 111 (for the top students in SCLA 110) or the two-course sequence (e.g., summer testing of incoming students admitted with no proficiency test scores). 

Besides the ACE-In, PLaCE administers a free, publicly available internet-based vocabulary test that serves as a baseline measure of receptive vocabulary knowledge for students enrolled in SCLA 110. During the fall 2025 semester, 215 international undergraduate students enrolled in SCLA 110 completed the vocabulary assessment.

From June 2025 to May 2026, PLaCE administered a total of 343 ACE-In tests, including two tests to accommodate pre-admissions athletic candidates at the request of the Undergraduate International Admissions Office. Scoring these assessments required 19 PLaCE instructor-raters to complete 759 ACE-In Listen & Repeat ratings, 1,001 Oral Reading ratings, and 964 Speaking & Listening ratings. These totals include third ratings conducted when the first two independent blind ratings did not reach agreement.

Student and Staff Accomplishments

  • PLaCE Senior Lecturer Dr. Joseph Sorell and PLaCE Associate Director of Evaluation Dr. Lixia Cheng collaborated with Purdue doctoral students in Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) and Physics and Astronomy—both participants in PLaCE's Campus Connections Conversation Club—on a research project on AI-enhanced game design for ESL teaching and learning. The team will present its preliminary findings at the Artificial Intelligence Research in Applied Linguistics (AIRiAL) Conference at Teachers College, Columbia University, in September 2026.
  • Under the guidance of their SCLA 110 instructor, 13 of the 14 undergraduate students in one section of SCLA 110 volunteered to serve as peer judges at Purdue's Fall 2025 Undergraduate Research Expo, collectively evaluating 34 in-person and virtual presentations.
  • As an AI Academy Fellow (Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning), PLaCE Lecturer Dr. Haiyan Li participated in a week-long workshop (August 18–22, 2025) focused on developing AI-assisted course enhancements for SCLA 110 and SCLA 111. Through co-developing student activities and training materials, she contributed to Purdue's cross-disciplinary faculty learning community on AI ethics and application.
  • As an Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation (IMPACT) Fellow, Dr. Haiyan Li completed multiple design sprints and peer consultation sessions during the 2025–2026 academic year. She was selected for the May 2026 IMPACT Week cohort and successfully completed the program, exploring evidence-based approaches to course design, assessment, and instructional practice that she will apply to the continued enhancement of SCLA 110 and SCLA 111.  
  • Dr. Haiyan Li was also selected for the third Steps to Leaps Perspective Project cohort of instructors. In this role, she will collaborate with campus colleagues to integrate the Steps to Leaps pillars into SCLA 110 and present her pedagogical findings at the Steps to Leaps Summit in Spring 2027.
  • Dr. Haiyan Li received a 2025–2026 Purdue Book Initiative Grant to support publication of her co-authored book, English Learner Literacy in Elementary Schools: Instructional Quality, Professional Development, and the Impact of COVID-19, with Dr. Wayne E. Wright (Associate Dean, College of Education). The book was published by Emerald Publishing (UK) in 2026.
  • Dr. Nadezda Pimenova was promoted from Senior Lecturer to Associate Director of Operations, effective July 1, 2026. In this role, she coordinates operational and administrative functions that support PLaCE's continued growth.
  • This fiscal year, PLaCE staff delivered 17 academic presentations at university, regional, national, and international conferences and published one peer-reviewed journal article. These scholarly contributions bring the cumulative total of PLaCE-related presentations and publications to 101 since the program's inception in 2014.