Teaching Spanish to Native Spanish Speakers Web site
The Alliance has redesigned the Teaching Spanish to Native Spanish Speakers (SNS) Web site to make information about the Spanish-speaking population in the United States and resources for working with Spanish speakers in Spanish language programs more readily available. Learn more.
Alliance Partners
Learn more about the organizations and individuals supporting the Alliance through significant contributions.
About Us
Alliance Steering Committee
The Alliance Steering Committee guides the work of the Alliance, focusing on planning and making connections to the heritage language community and those working in the field.
The Steering Committee
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provides leadership for all Alliance work
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supports collaboration among individuals and organizations
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promotes information sharing among individuals and organizations and with the field
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undertakes projects
| Dr. Donna Christian Center for Applied Linguistics Washington, DC |
[bio] | [email] |
| Dr. Catherine Ingold National Foreign Language Center Washington, DC |
[bio] | [email] |
| Ann Kelleher University of California, Davis Davis, CA |
[bio] | [email] |
| Dr. Joy Kreeft Peyton Center for Applied Linguistics Washington, DC |
[bio] | [email] |
| Dr. Joseph LoBianco University of Melbourne Melbourne, Australia |
[bio] | [email] |
| Dr. Scott McGinnis Defense Language Institute Arlington, VA |
[bio] | [email] |
| Dr. Ana María Schwartz University of Maryland Baltimore County Baltimore, MD |
[bio] | [email] |
| Adriana Val University of Maryland Baltimore County Baltimore, MD |
[bio] | [email] |
| Dr. Shuhan Wang National Foreign Language Center Washington, DC |
[bio] | [email] |
Dr. Donna Christian
Dr. Donna Christian is President of the Center for Applied Linguistics
(CAL) in Washington, DC, where her research and writing focus
on language in education, including issues of second language
learning and dialect diversity. Recent publications include Dialects
in Schools and Communities (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2007, co-authored
with Carolyn Adger and Walt Wolfram), Educating
English Language Learners: A Synthesis of Research Evidence (Cambridge University
Press, 2006, co-edited with Fred Genesee, Kathryn Lindholm-Leary,
and William Saunders), and Bilingual Education (TESOL, 2001,
co-edited with Fred Genesee). She serves on a number of boards,
including the editorial advisory boards of the Heritage
Language Journal and the International
Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Board of Directors of The International Research
Foundation on English Language Education, and Advisory Board
of the Hispanic Family Literacy Institute.
Dr. Catherine Ingold
Dr. Catherine Ingold is Director of the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) at the University of Maryland. She joined NFLC in 1996 after a varied career in higher education that included service as a tenured foreign language faculty member and department chair, Dean of Arts and Sciences, and Provost at Gallaudet University; and as President of the American University of Paris. She is Principal Investigator of two federally funded projects: LangNet, a large-scale project to develop e-learning materials for higher proficiency levels in critical languages; and STARTALK, which promotes summer programs for teachers and learners of Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Urdu, and Persian. Dr. Ingold’s professional interests include US language policy and heritage language development, including NEH-funded Project REACH: www.nflc.org/REACH.
Ann Kelleher
Ann Kelleher is a Ph.D. student in linguistics at the University
of California, Davis. Her research interests include the socio-political
contexts of Chinese language development in the United States,
ideological and pedagogical perspectives on heritage language education,
and second “dialect” development. Her research draws on ethnographic
approaches, critical discourse analysis, and cognitive and functional
perspectives on grammar.
Dr. Joy Kreeft Peyton
Dr. Joy Kreeft Peyton is Vice President of the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) in Washington, DC. She is also director of the Center for Adult English Language Acquisition (CAELA) Network. She is interested in how teachers implement educational innovations (particularly writing methodologies) and factors that influence their success. She is co-editor of Heritage Languages in America: Preserving a National Resource (with Donald A. Ranard and Scott McGinnis) and Language in Action: New Studies of Language in Society (with Peg Griffin, Walt Wolfram, and Ralph Fasold). She is a member of the editorial advisory boards of the Heritage Language Journal, Language Learning and Technology, and the Modern Language Journal.
Dr. Joseph LoBianco
Dr. Joseph LoBianco is Chair of Language and Literacy Education and Associate Dean for Global Relations and Knowledge Transfer in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is best known as the author of the 1987 National Policy on Languages, adopted as a bipartisan national plan for English, indigenous languages, Asian and European languages, and Interpreting and Translating services and now used worldwide as a model of rational language planning. He has been an invited short-term consultant on constitutional language planning in many settings: post-Apartheid South Africa; language education in Hawaii; integration of Muslim immigrants in European Schools for the Council of Europe; indigenous and foreign languages in Alberta, Canada; Chinese teaching in Alberta, Canada; official English and heritage languages in the United States for several national organizations and agencies; Tamil and Malay in Singaporean language education; bilingual literacy in Western Samoa and eight other Pacific Island countries; culture and intercultural education for the Japan Foundation; Cantonese- and English-medium education in Hong Kong schools; shared language policy for the Goethe Institute and the French Ministry of Education; integration of Asian immigrant children into schooling in Tuscany, Lombardy, and the Veneto regions of Italy. His publications include Deliberative Democracy and Language Planning (in press, 2010) and Language learning from the inside: Learners’ voices & public policy ambitions (with Renata Aliani), Multilingual Matters (in press, 2010).
Dr. Scott McGinnis
Dr. Scott McGinnis is Academic Advisor for the Washington office
of the Defense Language Institute (DLI). He also holds the academic
rank of professor at DLI. Between 1999 and 2003, he served as Executive
Director of the National Council of Organizations of Less Commonly
Taught Languages at the National Foreign Language Center in College
Park, Maryland. His 24 years in the language teaching profession
have included a decade of experience as supervisor of Chinese language
programs at the University of Oregon and University of Maryland.
Dr. McGinnis has authored or edited five books and over 40 book
chapters, journal articles and reviews on language pedagogy and
linguistics for the less commonly taught languages in general,
and Chinese and Japanese in particular. He served two terms as
President of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, as chair
of The College Board Chinese Language Test Development Committee
for the Educational Testing Service, and as a member of the Board
of Examiners for the National Council for the Accreditation of
Teacher Education. His current professional responsibilities include serving
as Coordinator for the Interagency Language Roundtable for the
United States government.
Dr. Ana María Schwartz
Dr. Ana María Schwartz is an associate professor of Spanish and second language pedagogy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). She is chair of the department of Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication and teaches 300-level "Spanish for Heritage Spanish Speakers" courses. Her research interests include instructed heritage language acquisition, heritage and foreign language pedagogy, and teacher professional development. Dr. Schwartz is a member of the Baltimore City
Commission on Hispanic Affairs and is active in Latino issues in the city and the university. She is co-author of the textbook Noticias: An Advanced Intermediate Content-Based Course and has contributed articles to various volumes focusing on heritage languages.
Adriana Val
Adriana Val is an undergraduate Spanish instructor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), where she also finished her M.A. in Intercultural Communication and is currently studying for her Ph.D. in Language Literacy and Culture. Her research is on Heritage Spanish Speakers ethnicity, race, and identity formation. She also works at the English Language Center at UMBC as Technology Coordinator for Distance Learning Courses. Ms. Val has been working with CAL as a research assistant for the Alliance for the Advancement of the Heritage Languages since 2004. In Argentina, her native country, Ms. Val obtained her degree of history professor and taught children and adults and served as a facilitator for literacy programs with indigenous populations.
Dr. Shuhan Wang
Dr. Shuhan C. Wang is Deputy Director at the National Foreign Language Center. One of her primary responsibilities is STARTALK, a federally funded project for promoting the study and teaching of critical languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Persian, Turkish, Swahili, and Urdu in K-16 settings (including heritage community schools) in the United States. Prior to joining the NFLC, from 2006 to 2009, she was Executive Director for Chinese Language Initiatives at the Asia Society, whose mission is to expand and strengthen the Chinese language field in the U.S. From 1998 to 2006, Shuhan was the Education Associate for World Languages and International Education for the Delaware Department of Education. She is active in the field of foreign and heritage language education and serves on various national committees, including the Board of Directors for the Joint National Committee for Languages (JNCL) and the Editorial Board of Foreign Language Annals of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). Her research interests include heritage and foreign language education, issues related to second language acquisition, teacher education and professional development, and language planning and policy. She is leading an international team to develop Flying with Chinese, a series of textbooks for K-6 learners of Chinese.
