At its annual conference, the California Language Teachers' Association named Dr. Terri Nelson an Outstanding Teacher. The announcement at the Awards Luncheon was read by Connie Vargas, a local Spanish teacher:

This professor has a long list of contributions to communicative activities. One student who teaches Foreign Language attests: "This is the most communicative teacher I have ever had as a student of foreign languages."

She has made over 50 presentations - local, regional, 3 international and even some here at this conference. This professor organized and created a language field day (summit) where hundreds of students and their teachers were hosted at the university for a day of activities resplendent in the language.

Her Dept. Chair tells howshe "authored a truly unique, award winning, interactive online French activity that motivates language learning and promotes both reading and writing communication." Then she generously donated her proceeds to CASLA, the Center for Advancement of Second Language Acquisition.

The efforts of this communicative teaching colleague alone have brought professional development, cultural enhancement, and technological literacy to teachers, and financial support for high school students to receive university scholarships to continue language study. In addition, foreign language teachers were awarded scholarships through her foundation to attend this very conference as well as the Summer Seminar in Santa Barbara. She was instrumental in organizing a reception to recognize the achievements of hundreds of world language students of two counties.

She has promoted a valuable relationship between CSUSB and it's local foreign language teacher association, an alliance of great mutualbenefit.

IEFLA's candidate and CLTA's 2004 Outstanding Teacher, Dr. Terri Nelson.

Dr. Nelson is only the second university professor to be honored by the CLTA.

The CLTA Award was followed by being named the Outstanding Teacher for the College of Arts & Letters at CSUSB. This is the second time that Dr. Nelson has been honored by the College (she was awarded the Outstanding Teaching Innovation award in 1997 with her colleague, Walter Oliver). She was also named an Outstanding Teacher by the Inland Empire Foreign Language Association in 2003 and Outstanding Teaching Assistant by Northwestern University in 1992.