Vance Stevens was an exceptional teacher and inspirational mentor to countless educators. He was a driving force to advance English teaching in the Virtual worlds as a remarkable educator with a strong but humble presence in an educators’ world and a passionate belief in collaboration between both educators and young digital natives.

Vance Stevens was a co-founding member and an early chair of the Computer Assisted Language Learning Interest Section in 1984. Vance Stevens was an online pioneer; he founded the Communities of Practice Webheads in Action in 2002 and has participated in coordinating the TESOL Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) Interest Section’s Electronic Village Online (EVO) since 2003. He hosted the podcast series Learning2gether, which has more than 520 episodes. He was lead moderator of EVO Minecraft MOOC since it began in 2015.

The CALL-IS will be hosting an event in Portland, Oregon at the annual TESOL Convention to honor Vance’s legacy. We invite any who wish to leave memories of Vance in the comments for this post. We plan to read at least some of the memories from this page during this event.

The CALL-IS is also sponsoring a fundraiser to establish a TESOL Award in honor of Vance’s legacy to support the professional development and research of teachers worldwide. If you would like to contribute to the fundraiser, you can donate through Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/donate/1518513225226640/10162076083742439/. You can also donate to TESOL directly at their website, https://sites.tesol.org/MemberPortal/Fundraising/Sign_In_to_Donate_Awards.aspx?WebsiteKey=0d1b66b8-c087-413e-94b1-74021c640176. You will need to create an account, but you can donate even if you are not a member. After making your donation, follow-up with an email to awards@tesol.org stating that your donation is meant for the Vance Stevens award.