The International and Foreign Language Education(IFLE) Office Welcomes Clay Pell, Deputy Assistant Secreatary

Dear Colleagues:

I am immeasurably pleased to take this opportunity to introduce you to Mr. Clay Pell, the newly appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary for International and Foreign Language Education (IFLE).  Some of you already may have met Clay who joined the IFLE staff in mid-April of this year.  If you have met him, I know that you are as excited as the IFLE staff is about having him at the helm to lead the administration of our Title VI and Fulbright-Hays programs.

Clay Pell earned his J.D. from Georgetown University, and he graduated from Harvard University with high honors in Social Studies and a Citation in Modern Standard Arabic.  Prior to joining the Department of Education, Clay served as Director for Strategic Planning on the National Security Staff at the White House.  He is a Term Member of the Council of Foreign Languages; a member of the Bars of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and the United States Supreme Court; and the Department of Education’s Representative on the National Security Education Board. 

Having not only studied Arabic but also Chinese and Spanish, Clay brings a personal understanding about the important role the study of world languages plays in advancing America’s economic and national security.  We are fortunate to have him join our ranks and the staff looks forward to working with him in bolstering our efforts to promote the study of world languages and cultures of other countries within all sectors of education in the U.S.

 Sylvia W. Crowder

Lenore Yaffee Garcia Joins the IFLE Staff

Lenore Yaffee Garcia rejoined the Department of Education on June 3, 2013 as Director of Strategy and Communication for International and Foreign Language Education (IFLE).  Ms. Garcia will work with Deputy Assistant Secretary Clay Pell and the IFLE Office to promote the importance of learning languages and international experiences for students at all levels.  Lenore is  looking forward to engaging with grantees and the broader community in a conversation on how to expand opportunities for US students to benefit from international and foreign language education.

From 2005 to 2013, Ms. Garcia was Director of the Organization of American States (OAS) Office of Education and Culture, which promotes policy dialogue and technical cooperation among the  34 OAS member states in the fields of education and culture. Her work at the OAS focused on policy and project development in the fields of education for democratic citizenship, education indicators, early childhood education, strengthening the teaching profession, and on public policy initiatives that use the arts and culture to promote economic development and social inclusion, particularly for youth. Before joining the OAS, Ms. Garcia had been Director of International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Education, where she was instrumental in creating International Education Week, the APEC Education Forum, and the US-Brazil Partnership for Education; previously, she was a senior policy analyst in the Department’s Planning and Evaluation Service. In 2004, as a fellow of the American Fellows program, she worked in the Ministry of Education of Chile as part of the Technical Secretariat of the National Commission on Citizenship Formation. A former Fulbright scholar in Quito, Ecuador, Ms. Garcia has worked as an educator and program administrator in Colombia and the United States and holds degrees in political science (University of Pennsylvania), Latin American studies (Georgetown) and economics (Delaware).

Dr. Sylvia Crowder is Retiring!

On June 30, 2013, Dr. Sylvia W. Crowder will retire from Federal service.  Dr. Crowder has spent 13 ½ years of her 35-year professional career as a public servant. In January 1999, she began her federal service with the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). At FIPSE, she worked on the Comprehensive Program and was Coordinator for the Program for North American Mobility in Higher Education, Coordinator for the U.S.-Brazil Higher Education Consortia Program, and Coordinator of the United States-Russia Program: Improving Research and Educational Activities in Higher Education.  She also served on the European Union – U.S. Atlantis team for FIPSE and coordinated the competition for the Underground Railroad Educational and Cultural Program.   

In July 2007, Sylvia was re-assigned from FIPSE to the Office of Postsecondary Education’s International and Foreign Language and Education (IFLE) unit at the Department of Education.  There, she subsequently held positions of Branch Chief for International Studies, Acting Director of IFLE, Senior Director of IFLE, and from May 2012 until April 15, 2013, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for International and Foreign Language Education.  

Dr. Crowder brought a rich background in higher education planning, policy development, administration, and teaching to the U.S. Department of Education.  Prior to her federal service, she was director at the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB) of a national program on college and university trusteeship and presidential relations for private colleges and universities; and an executive director of a national health care organization – where she, her board of directors, and staff developed policy and implemented training for health care administrators and community health care physicians.  In addition, she worked for fourteen years at the American Council on Education, where she served as a senior staff member and Director of a national college credit recognition program, connecting business and industry and the collegiate sector; and as a program associate for the ACE Office of Leadership Development in Higher Education. Her very first position in higher education was with Towson State University where she was a lecturer in French and English and Director of Supportive Curriculum in Language Arts.

Dr. Crowder served as Board Chair (2005 – 2007) and Board member of the Board of Trustees at Montgomery College in Montgomery County, Maryland.  She also has served on the Board of Trustees at Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan. She was President of the Board of Directors for the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, Montgomery County, Maryland. In addition, she has served as chair and/or member of numerous other boards and advisory committees in the international and higher education and community.

Sylvia is a lover of languages, art, and music.  In retirement, she plans: to participate in activities that will help her retain some level of proficiency in French and Russian which she studied during her undergraduate and graduate college years at Howard University, the University of Dijon, Georgetown University, and the University of Maryland; to continue her lifelong study of piano which she plays frequently at church services, receptions, and private parties; and to travel a bit – especially throughout Canada and Europe—with her husband, John.

We wish Sylvia all the best during her retirement!

The KU Center for East Asian Studies “On the Air”

The Center for East Asian Studies at KU has developed a far-reaching, eclectic outreach program that includes teachers’ workshops, classroom presentations, activity tables, language tables and, our pièce de résistance, Postcard from Asia, broadcast twice weekly on KANU, the University of Kansas NPR affiliate. Written after the style of an old-time newsy postcard and ending with the clichéd but nostalgic sign-off, “Wish you were here” , each 60-second Postcard gives the listening audience (potentially 75,000 strong) audio snapshots of the languages and cultures of our four countries: China, Japan, Korea and Mongolia. These glimpses comprise the quirky, the contemporary and the traditional. Conceived, created, and written by Randi Hacker, the Center’s Outreach Coordinator, Postcards is entering its 7th year and has just recorded its 290th script. Former Center Director Bill Tsutsui was narrator until he left to become Dean at Southern Methodist University at which point Randi Hacker took on this role. This year, with the help of KU’s Ermal Garinger Academic Resource Center (EGARC), Postcards was archived and now exists also as a podcast which brings a very 20th Century medium, radio, squarely into the 21st Century. To listen click here:  http://www.ceas.ku.edu/resources/audio.shtml.

 Read Chinese! and Read Arabic! University of Maryland

Two International Research and Studies (IRS) grants between 2006 and 2012, Read Chinese! and Read Arabic! support the rapidly expanding interest in the study of these languages in the United States and address the critical need for high-quality level-appropriate reading materials..

The images at the top shows an example of an exercise in a Read Chinese lesson related to the reading text. The exercise challenges the learner match idioms in Chinese on the left with their English translations on the right. The smaller box on the left gives background information about Chinese idioms.

Chinese: http://readchinese.nflc.umd.edu

Modern Standard Arabic: http://readarabic.nflc.umd.edu

CLAS Welcomes La Camioneta Filmmaker, Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt’s Center for Latin American Studies has worked with one of its alumni, Mark Kendall (M.A. 2009) to promote and develop curriculum materials around his documentary film, La Camioneta: enhance the film’s impact as an educational tool for teachers nationally, visit: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/clas/2013/04/clas-welcomes-la-camioneta-filmmaker/.

Afterschool language and Culture Program at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies

Since 2009, the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies’ outreach group, CERIS (Cornell Educational Resources for International Studies) has taught 23 languages to over 500 elementary, middle and high school students, many of which come from low-income families.  Funded in large part by Title VI funds, the goal of the program is to expose K-12 students to cultures and languages they may not be exposed to in their daily life to create an interest in studying foreign languages when the opportunity arises.  The less-commonly taught languages include Hausa, Macedonian, Kannada, Burmese, Tagalog, Tibetan, Karen, Lingala and Khmer. For more information on our outreach activities, please go to: http://einaudi.cornell.edu/outreach

College of Lake County’s semester in China offers life-changing opportunities

Since 2008, 60 Illinois community college students have enjoyed a unique, affordable and life-changing opportunity to study and live in China at Xi’an International University (XAIU). The program was partially funded by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI-A grant awarded to the College of Lake County (CLC) of Grayslake, Ill.

CLC sponsored three semester-long trips to Xi’an in 2008, 2009 and 2011, and 14 students will spend fall semester 2013 in China. CLC has established a close partnership with XAIU to provide opportunities for students and faculty members, who benefit greatly from their educational and cultural experiences in China. CLC students experience life as Chinese university students through active campus life, sports and academic activities. Students pay about $4,500 for the semester-long program.

As students prepared for the semester-long programs in 2008 and 2009, enrollment in Chinese language courses jumped 300 percent. In addition to the trips, CLC created more Chinese language courses and new transferable, general education courses. The college now offers four levels of Chinese language courses in the fall, spring and summer sessions.

CLC English Professor Michael Latza, who accompanied 18 students in 2008, taught two English classes to international students at XIAU and participated in two other courses. He said the Illinois students quickly learned to navigate the city and university.

“Our students became very accomplished at surviving and thriving on their own in a large foreign city -- skills that will be handy for anyone who wants to do business in China. It was an opportunity for students to take control of their own lives, to be responsible for themselves in a substantial way, which fosters personal growth,” Latza said.

“I believe the lessons I am learning will help me throughout my academic and professional career,” said former student Peter Murphy while studying in China in 2009. “There are very few community colleges offering a program like this, and because I am an international business major who is very interested in China’s growing effect on the world, it just feels like the obvious thing to do.” 

Dr. Li-hua Yu, CLC faculty coordinator of international education, said that without the Department of Education grant, CLC students would not have had this opportunity to learn Chinese and study in China. “CLC is the only community college with a semester-long study abroad program in China. “Our students understand how important China is and they seize this opportunity,” she said.

Six of the 60 CLC students who studied in China and then transferred to four-year universities later returned to China to launch their careers, according to Dr. Yu. “One of our students later went to Shanghai for a semester while he was attending New York University, and three students married Chinese women and now live there,” she said. “To these students, the experience of studying in China during their first few years in college was truly life changing.”

While in Xi’an, CLC groups have ventured to other cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.  Visiting cultural landmarks such as the Terra Cotta Museum and historical sites have been part of the co-curriculum activities for the program. “For our students and faculty, opportunities like this are priceless,” said Dr. Yu.

Josh Bradley, a student who participated in one of the trips, agrees.

“My decision to go abroad solely relied upon my desire to escape the world I had grown so accustomed to so that I could experience something unique and amazing. While I did not know it at the time, my small spark of interest in China would eventually become a fire. Everything that I do now has ties to my time there and what I want to do in the future,” he said.

“Before I had gone to China I had no idea where my life was headed. Once I came back from China, so much had changed,” Bradley explained. “I began focusing my efforts in Mandarin because it was something that I truly enjoyed and felt that I could do well. I immediately expressed interest in going back to China and managed to do so another two times after the first semester had ended. My understanding of the world around me changed. Views on people, culture, religion, modern languages, all changed because of a single semester in another location.”

In fall of 2010, the semester-long study abroad program become a permanent program sponsored by the Illinois Community College Consortium of International Studies and Programs (ICISP), thus making this study abroad experience accessible to any student who attends one of the 38 community colleges that are members of the ICISP organization. With the support of ICISP, this program will be able to maintain the consistently high enrollment necessary to continue to provide Illinois community college students this uniquely affordable and accessible opportunity.

In addition, as the result of another U.S. Department of Education Title VI-A grant CLC received with Joliet Junior College (Joliet, Ill.) between 2010-2013, CLC is in the process of developing similar programs at Ehime University of Japan and Jordan University of Sciences and Technology at Irbid, Jordan. CLC students who are interested in studying Japanese and Arabic languages will be provided with opportunities for Japanese and Arabic language emersion programs in the near future. About 20 CLC students have already participated in three-week Study Abroad Programs to Japan in 2012 and to Jordan in 2013.

The Center for Global Studies at Penn State University

A Title VI NRC, recently completed its second season of World Stories Alive!, an innovative language-outreach program for young children.  The Saturday-morning story program at Schlow Regional Public Library, produced in conjunction with the Young Scholoars of Central Pennsylvania charter school (YSCP) read more at: http://www.schlowlibrary.org/content/children/world-stories-alive-tales-many-tongues-featuring-spanish0

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.406324736117208.97939.116267605122924&type=3

http://www.flickr.com/photos/87074394@N05/sets/72157632811068037/

Joint Title VI NRC Duke University-University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill CSEEES Supports the Introduction of Russian Language 

UNC’s Dr. Jacqueline Olich and Duke’s Dr. Edna Andrews supported Mr. Daniel Miller’s (Department Chair, English, Charles E. Jordan High School) efforts who to introduce Russian as a sustainable language option for Charles E. Jordan High School students for the 2013-2014.  Visit thier website at http://cseees.unc.edu/outreach.

University of Pittsburgh’s REES Works to Enhance Racial Diversity in Field of Slavic Studies

The University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Russian and East European Studies (REES) presented a special symposium event, titled “African-American Perspectives on Russian and Slavic Studies,” in February 2011. The symposium brought together a diverse group of approximately 40 university and K-12 faculty and administrators, graduate and undergraduate students, film and journalism professionals, and current and former high school students of Russian to discuss the problem of underrepresentation of African-Americans in the field of Russian and Slavic studies. Throughout the day, participants explored the experiences of African-Americans who have studied, taught and conducted research in the former Soviet Union and/or focusing on Slavic languages, literatures and cultures. Presentations, roundtable discussions and a film screening focused on the challenges of living, studying and traveling as part of an underrepresented minority in a region of the world which has historically and recently had an uneasy relationship with racial diversity.

Primary organizers of the 2011 symposium at Pitt were Gina Peirce, REES Assistant Director/Outreach Coordinator, and Devin Browne, world language teacher and coordinator of the International Baccalaureate program at Pittsburgh Schenley High School. While teaching Russian language to classes of predominantly African-American students in Schenley’s IB program from 2008 to 2012, Mr. Browne collaborated extensively with REES to provide enrichment activities to increase students’ understanding of the cultural context in which Russian is spoken. Other co-sponsors of the “African-American Perspectives” symposium included multiple departments and centers at Pitt, as well as the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). Both REES and Pitt’s Global Studies Center utilized Title VI National Resource Center funds for the event.

As a direct result of the symposium, a new Association for Students and Teachers of Color in Slavic Studies (STC) was formed as an affiliate of ASEEES. The Association’s mission statement declares that the group is “dedicated to better connecting and expanding the network of minority scholars working in the profession. The Association is committed to improving general understanding of the unique challenges faced by students and educators of color studying, teaching, and conducting research in and about the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The Association seeks to serve as a platform for discussions of race and ethnicity in the region.”

The first annual meeting of STC at the November 2011 ASEEES convention in Washington, DC brought together approximately 25 faculty, graduate and undergraduate students (including a group of Russian language students from historically black Howard University), and staff of educational organizations working in the Russian and East European world area. The second annual meeting took place at the 2012 ASEEES convention in New Orleans, and REES continues to work closely with the officers of the organization. STC has established an online presence through Facebook and Google Groups and is currently developing a blog for minority students and scholars to share their experiences with study and research in countries of the former Soviet Union, including perspectives on specific study abroad programs and locations. REES looks forward to further collaboration with this important initiative to support and increase participation by members of underrepresented minority groups in the field of Russian and Slavic studies.

2013 NRC Conference:
Demonstrating the Impact of National Resource Centers

More than 150 faculty directors, assistant directors and administrators from 86 Title VI National Resource Centers attended the 2013 NRC conference, "Demonstrating the Impact of National Resource Centers" held at The Ohio State University on February 27-28. It was the first collective effort among National Resource Centers to identify and promote effective evaluation practices. NRC administrators and researchers came together to share promising practices in assessing foreign language and area studies programs, helping facilitate national discourse on defining and measuring NRC outcomes.

Conference presentations and discussions focused on evaluating NRC core programs, including Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships, K-16 outreach, less-commonly-taught languages and undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Based on these presentations and subsequent group discussions, the program committee summarized the impact of NRC and made recommendations to NRCs, institutions of higher education and the U.S. Congress.

Presentation materials and conference session recordings are available for download and online viewing at the conference website at http://easc.osu.edu/events/2013-nrc-conference. For more information or to ask any questions, please contact Cindy Xinquan Jiang at Jiang.533@osu.edu 

2013 NRC Conference: Demonstrating the Impact of National Resource Centers.  More than 150 faculty directors, assistant directors and administrators from 86 Title VI National Resource Centers attended the 2013 NRC conference, "Demonstrating the Impact of National Resource Centers" held at The Ohio State University on February 27-28. It was the first collective effort among National Resource Centers to identify and promote effective evaluation practices. NRC administrators and researchers came together to share promising practices in assessing foreign language and area studies programs, helping facilitate national discourse on defining and measuring NRC outcomes.

Conference presentations and discussions focused on evaluating NRC core programs, including Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships, K-16 outreach, less-commonly-taught languages and undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Based on these presentations and subsequent group discussions, the program committee summarized the impact of NRC and made recommendations to NRCs, institutions of higher education and the U.S. Congress.

Presentation materials and conference session recordings are available for download and online viewing at the conference website at http://easc.osu.edu/events/2013-nrc-conference. For more information or to ask any questions, please contact Cindy Xinquan Jiang at Jiang.533@osu.edu.