SESSION 4C

Darren Brookes, UECA/NEAS
Brand awareness and international ELT community engagement: the Cambodia TESOL experience

Abstract
The Cambodia TESOL conference series, held in Phnom Penh each February, has grown from 150 delegates in 2004 to over 1500 delegates in 2017. “CamTESOL” is now one of the largest annual ELT conferences in the Asia-Pacific. This conference is supported by the United States and Australian governments with the aim of helping Cambodia and South East Asia to develop their English language teaching and research capacities.  In addition to the main two-day conference program, there are also NEAS sponsored leadership and quality forums, local site visits and a full day research symposium sponsored by UECA. A part of the full day research program is a research grant awards program. This program enables local ASEAN researchers to present topical ELT research papers and submit papers for review to the prestigious Language Education in Asia (LEIA) journal. UECA member colleges participate by mentoring these researchers.

Bio
Darren Brookes has been the UECA project coordinator for the Cambodia TESOL ASEAN Regional Research Grant Recipient Mentoring program since 2013. In the last three iterations of the project, Darren has coordinated a team of local mentors (selected from UECA member centres) to work one on one online with grant recipients from several ASEAN member countries. Darren holds a Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics from The University of Queensland and has worked across the ELICOS, EFL and higher education sectors for nearly twenty years. His special interests include eLearning, mLearning, blended learning, project management and the professional development of educators.