Nicole Majca, who graduated from the Spanish BAT program in 2017, was the recipient of the Illinois chapter of the Association of the Colleges of Teacher Education’s (IACTE) Outstanding Beginning Teacher Award (OBTA) on April 9. It is a competitive state award that honors teachers in the first two years of their career. The UIUC OBTA recipient is nominated by someone in the Teacher Education program from which she/he graduated, & a committee at the Council on Teacher Education makes the final selection. Only one recipient is selected per campus, & Nicole will represent the UIUC for the next three years as one of the 2019 OBTA recipients.