2017 Ferguson Award – Ofelia García, PhD
2017 Recipient of the Charles A. Ferguson Award for Outstanding Scholarship: Dr. Ofelia García
Ofelia García is Professor in the Ph.D. programs of Urban Education and of Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
She has been Professor of Bilingual Education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, Dean of the School of Education at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University, and Professor of Education at The City College of New York.
Among her best-known books are Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective; Translanguaging; Language, Bilingualism and Education (with Li Wei, 2015 British Association of Applied Linguistics Book Award recipient). Her most recent books (2016-2017) include The Oxford Handbook of Language and Society (with N. Flores & M. Spotti); Encyclopedia of Bilingual and Multilingual Education (with A. Lin & S. May), The Translanguaging classroom (with S. I. Johnson & K. Seltzer); Translanguaging with multilingual students (with T. Kleyn). Other books include The Oxford Handbook of Language and Society (with N. Flores & M. Spotti); Encyclopedia of Bilingual and Multilingual Education (with A. Lin & S. May), The Translanguaging classroom (with S. I. Johnson & K. Seltzer); Translanguaging with multilingual students (with T. Kleyn).
García’s extensive publication record on bilingualism and the education of bilinguals is grounded in her life experience living in New York City after leaving Cuba at the age of 11, teaching language minority students bilingually, educating bilingual and ESL teachers, and working with doctoral students researching these topics. She is the General Editor of The International Journal of the Sociology of Language and the co-editor of Language Policy (with H. Kelly-Holmes). She was the 2012 Wits Claude Leon Distinguished Scholar at the University of Witwatersrand (South Africa), and has been a Fulbright Scholar, and a Spencer Fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Education, and was a former member of the Board of Trustees of the Center for Applied Linguistics.
