Melissa Bowles’ proposal “The Bilingual Advantage Starts at Home: Raising Awareness of the Benefits of Home Language Maintenance Among Illinois Teachers and Families” has been one of the 14 proposals awarded in the Presidential Initiative to Celebrate the Impact of the Arts and the Humanities competition. President Killeen has described the initiative as “a new system-wide funding opportunity aimed at highlighting and celebrating the public good flowing from the arts and the humanities.”   The goal of the program, as the president stated, was to promote the strength of the arts and the humanities at our universities and beyond. They received many proposals from all three University of Illinois campuses which made the review process very competitive. This attests to the great quality and excellence of Melissa’s research proposal and the foreseeable impact it will have in our state and beyond.