MinneTESOL believes strongly in the importance of advocacy for immigrant and refugee English learners in Minnesota. We acknowledge that the jobs of ESL teachers go beyond the classroom and include many types of advocacy from connecting students to resources to lobbying legislators for policy changes. We have chosen to honor this important advocacy work by creating the Mary Diaz Award for ELL Advocacy beginning in 2017. Mary Diaz was “one of the founders of [Hamline University’s] ESL and bilingual programs. She also worked for the Comprehensive Assistance Center, housed in the Hamline School of Education, from which she provided technical assistance to school districts serving English learners to help them meet Civil Rights Act requirements. Several colleagues said she was better known for her work with refugee and immigrant education than anyone else in Minnesota” [Star Tribune].