The cornerstone project for the National Heritage Language Resource Center is an annual research institute, created to support the center's principal mission of establishing a research base for heritage language education. The first institute was held in the summer of 2007 at UC Davis, the home campus of the UC Consortium for Language Learning and Teaching.
The 2008 institute met at Harvard University, the home institution of director Maria Polinsky. Presenters discussed their research in progress and other readings with participants, who included linguists, applied linguists, faculty in education and foreign languages, and graduate students, representing a spectrum of heritage languages and communities from across the country.