Congratulations to the winners of the 2025 Association of Departments of English and Association of Language Departments service awards, Teresa Mangum and Sheri Spaine Long. The awards will be presented during the MLA Awards Ceremony, which will take place on 9 January at the MLA Annual Convention in Toronto.
Teresa Mangum’s service to the profession has rippled outward from her department, discipline, and institution in myriad ways, consistently characterized by collaboration, inventiveness, and an abiding desire to ensure that in any venue diverse voices were always present. A scholar of Victorian studies, she has served on boards of professional associations such as the North American Victorian Studies Association. She has undertaken roles within the MLA and other organizations that facilitate the work of scholars, including service on the MLA Delegate Assembly and the National Humanities Alliance board of directors. Never one to work simply within one department, Mangum retired as an emeritus professor after having spent more than three decades on the faculty at the University of Iowa, in the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies and the Department of English, while serving for years as director of the Obermann Center for Advanced Study, whose programming integrated campus and community in vibrant events that demonstrate the deep value of humanities disciplines. She has long been a national leader in public humanities work, serving on the National Humanities Alliance board of directors, as a principal investigator on the Mellon grant Humanities for the Public Good, and in other leadership positions that demonstrate a boundless energy to work for the greater good. Teresa Mangum is the epitome of the generous colleague, thoughtful mentor, and meticulous scholar who represents the very best of academia.
Throughout her illustrious career, Sheri Spaine Long has had a sustained influence on students and teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, as well as on the broader field of world language education. Spaine Long has held faculty and leadership positions at the University of Alabama, Birmingham; the University of North Carolina, Charlotte; and the United States Air Force Academy. A modernizing force throughout her career, she served as executive director of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese from 2018 to 2023, guiding the organization through the COVID-19 pandemic, securing funding, and increasing membership—all while implementing her vision of a more inclusive, values-driven professional association. She also shaped the field through her editorial leadership of two flagship journals, serving as editor in chief of Foreign Language Annals from 2006 to 2009 and as editor of Hispania from 2010 to 2018. She is the author of the widely adopted textbooks Nexos and Cuadros as well as numerous articles on Spanish language, literature, and culture; leadership development; language pedagogy; and international education. Her national service includes roles on the boards of the ACTFL, the JNCL-NCLIS, and the International Symposium on Languages for Specific Purposes. A lifetime member of the MLA, she has served on the Delegate Assembly and on the forum executive committee for Second-Language Teaching and Learning. She is a generous, inspirational mentor and a masterful community builder. For her decades of leadership in publishing, editing, service, and mentorship, Sheri Spaine Long is richly deserving of the ALD Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession.