Our 20-Year Legacy: Building Bridges, Not Just Classrooms

For 20 years, the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language, and Literacy (CERCLL) has been your hub. We were one of 16 federally supported Language Resource Centers (LRCs), part of a 35-year network that quietly built the foundation for teaching languages other than English, especially those less commonly taught.

And now, Title VI, the federal program that supported an entire network of programs, has been defunded. It not only affected CERCLL and other Language Resource Centers, but also National Resource Centers, FLAS Fellowships, CIBErs, and more.

The need we addressed hasn’t disappeared—it’s more urgent than ever. Global competence, intercultural understanding, and language skills remain essential in our interconnected world. But the infrastructure that supported this work is gone.

While this is a profound loss for language education nationwide, we refuse to let the sun set on the vibrant community we’ve built together. This is the story of what we’ve accomplished, together, and why our mission must continue.

From the moment we opened our doors in 2006, our goal was to be more than a resource center; we wanted to be a catalyst for change. For two decades, CERCLL has hosted countless conferences, symposia, summer institutes, workshops, and webinars, and supported the creation of scholarly books and thousands of open-access teaching materials.

Our physical funding may be gone, but the resources we’ve created remain. The vast library of materials, tools, and research from the past 20 years will stay accessible on our website.

But we can’t create the next 20 years without your help. You are the heart of this center. If CERCLL’s mission—to promote critical global understanding through innovative language education—still resonates with you, please consider making a gift. Every dollar amount, small or large, helps keep our center running and allows us to explore new paths for funding the next chapter of this vital work.

Let’s keep the dialogue alive.