Conference Plenary Speakers

President, ELE Consulting International; Senior Advisor, Chinese Language Education, Asia Society; Director, Chinese Early Language and Immersion Network (CELIN)

Biography: Shuhan Wang is President of ELE Consulting International, LLC; Director of the Chinese Early Language and Immersion Network (CELIN); and Senior Advisor for Chinese Language Education at Asia Society. She is the former Deputy Director of the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) at the University of Maryland, Co-Principal Investigator for the STARTALK project, Executive Director of Chinese Language Initiatives at Asia Society, and Education Associate for World Languages and International Education at the Delaware Department of Education. Dr. Wang has taught in and worked with K-12 and international schools, university Chinese language programs, Chinese heritage language schools, and teacher training programs in the United States and abroad. She is the lead author of Flying with Chinese (Marshall Cavendish, 2007-2012) for K- Grade 6 Chinese language students and several other textbook series for K-12 programs. She has written and published extensively on language planning and policy, heritage and world language education, teacher education and development, and curriculum and biliteracy development. She is an advisor to the Ministry of Education of Singapore, providing consultation and professional development for staff and teachers and designing and creating the primary and secondary Chinese as Mother Tongue curricula and textbooks. Dr. Wang received her BA from National Taiwan University, an MA in Communication from Ohio State University, and a second MA in Bilingualism/TESOL from the University of Delaware. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. Contact her at shuhancw@gmail.com.

Presentation: Telling the Stories of Community-Based Language Schools in the United States 

Through sharing her personal, academic, and professional journeys, Dr. Wang illustrates how individuals, communities, and the profession can compose their own stories about their efforts in the intergenerational transmission of heritage languages and cultures in the United States. Drawing on a conceptual framework that she has developed over the years from academic studies and best practices domestically and internationally, she reflects on lessons learned from stories told in numerous community-based schools. Using the tools for story analysis, such as who the narrator and characters are and the context, setting, and plot, she teases out key elements that must be present in a good story. She concludes with significant themes she has learned from her own stories and those of many others, and offers suggestions to participants in community-based heritage language schools on how to compose, tell, and continue their stories. 

Director, Center for Language Teaching Advancement (CeLTA); Director, National Less Commonly Taught Languages Resource Center (NLRC); Associate Professor, Michigan State University, Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures
 http://www.felixkronenberg.com

Biography: Dr. Felix Kronenberg is the Director of the Center for Language Teaching Advancement (CeLTA) and an Associate Professor of German in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures at Michigan State University. He is also the PI and founding Director of the National Less Commonly Taught Languages Resource Center (NLRC), funded by a Title VI Grant by the U.S. Department of Education. His research interests include language education, program administration, learning space design, sociomateriality, innovation in language education, and technology. Currently he is finishing a monograph on language learning spaces under contract with Bloomsbury Academic and a co-edited volume on thriving language programs and enrollments, with Springer. He served as past-president of the International Association for Language Learning Technology (IALLT), president of the Southwest Association for Language Learning Technology (SWALLT), a fellow for the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education, and a consultant to more than a dozen language departments and language centers. He is Co-Principal Investigator on the 2.5 million Andrew W. Mellon Foundation LCTL and Indigenous Languages Partnership grant.

Presentation: Supporting Sustainable Community-Based Less Commonly Taught Language Programs

This presentation provides an overview of several initiatives that support Less Commonly Taught Language (LCTL) educators and community-based LCTL programs. The initiatives are developed by the Center for Language Teaching Advancement (CeLTA) and the National Less Commonly Taught Languages Resource Center (National LCTL Resource Center, NLRC) at Michigan State University. They include the Teach-A-LCTL resource guides, LCTL Doors (downloadable Online Open Resources) and other Open Educational Resources for LCTLs, the NLRC/CeLTA consulting for community-based education project, expansion of LCTL instruction in CeLTA’s Community Language School (CLS), asymmetrical strategic sharing of LCTLs, and physical learning space design for community-based language education. In addition to demonstrations of the available (and forthcoming!) resources and engagement opportunities, there will be ample time for questions and discussion with the audience. 

Program Director and Associate Professor of World Language Education, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Biography: Dr. Kristin J. Davin is an associate professor and program director of World Language Education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where she teaches world language methodology and assessment courses. She earned her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh and her MAEd from Wake Forest University, both in Foreign Language Education. Her most recent research focuses on the Seal of Biliteracy, and she is co-author of Promoting Multilingualism in Schools: A Framework for Implementing the Seal of Biliteracy, published with ACTFL, which describes how to equitably implement the policy. Dr. Davin studies how districts, schools, and community-based language organizations recognize students with the Seal of Biliteracy, how implementation influences language programming and curricula, and how students perceive and receive the recognition. Her work has been recognized with awards including the 2020 Anthony Papalia Award for Excellence in Teacher Education, the 2022 SCOLT Educator of Excellence Award, and the 2022 Stephan A. Freeman Award for Best Published Article in Language Teaching.

Presentation:  Moving Students to Continue Language Development with the Seal of Bilateracy

This presentation provides an overview of the Seal of Biliteracy and its implementation across the United States. Awarded to individuals proficient in two or more languages, the Seal of Biliteracy serves as an indicator of an individual’s bilingualism and biliteracy. As one of the first language education policies to promote the learning of languages other than English in the United States, the Seal has the potential to bolster multilingualism across the country. In this talk, I describe how some community-based heritage language schools have begun to leverage the Seal of Biliteracy initiative to motivate their students to continue studying their heritage language. I describe how these schools design courses aligned to proficiency guidelines, manage the Seal of Biliteracy assessment process, and, in some cases, provide college scholarships to recipients. I conclude with the voices of students, sharing their perspectives on what the Seal of Biliteracy means to them.