Project Leaders
Dr. Sujin Kim
Dr. Sujin Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Teaching Culturally and Linguistically Diverse and Exceptional Learners Program, College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University. As a Korean-English bilingual, TESOL scholar, and teacher educator, Dr. Kim has worked with teachers of multilingual learners to support their capacity building in content-integrated instruction, family engagement, and asset-based approach to teaching language to students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. She has published peer-reviewed articles and chapters on the topics of translanguaging and transmodalising theory and pedagogy in multilingual classrooms, STEM education for ELs, critical multiliteracies pedagogy, interactive virtual community of ESOL educators, and critical discourse analysis in education research.
Dr. Kathleen A. Ramos
Dr. Ramos is an Associate Professor in the College of Education and Human Development, School of Education. She works with preservice and in-service teacher education students in the Teaching Culturally, Linguistically Diverse and Exceptional Learners (TCLDEL) graduate program. Dr. Ramos is an experienced educator who has been working closely with culturally and linguistically diverse learners and their families since 1992. She began her teaching career in Pittsburgh Public Schools where she taught Spanish in grades 6-8 for 11 years and ESOL in grades 9-12 for 9 years. As a teacher educator, she is dedicated to supporting preservice and in-service teachers locally, nationally, and globally to strengthen their capacity to serve culturally and linguistically diverse students and their families with excellence and equity.
Cynthia Graville
Cynthia Graville is an Instructor of Converging Communication Technology and Director of the Communication Media Lab at Saint Louis University. Currently, she is enrolled as a doctoral student in the Teaching and Learning Division of the College of Education at UMSL. She was the recipient of ASTC’s Roy A. Shafer Leading Edge Award for New Leadership in the Field (2008). Her work as an activist, graphic artist, and educator unite in her National Science Foundation funded grant project that hires high school students to work as infographic scientists. Youth from marginalized communities have access to employment, health benefits, and education as agents as opposed to subjects.
Project Personnel
Xiaowen Chen (Sylvia)
Xiaowen Chen (Sylvia) is a full-time doctoral candidate in the College of Education and Human Development studying multicultural and multilingual education. She is currently working as a graduate assistant in the ACE-STEM project. Prior to the Ph.D. program, she got her master’s degree in TESOL from the University of Pennsylvania. Sylvia has more than 6 years of work experience in teaching Chinese Mandarin. In addition to teaching Mandarin, she has focused three years of her ESL teaching efforts for refugees and immigrant populations. Sylvia credits being a language teacher with helping her develop authentic caring for the language learning process and her students and notes that it has also improved her own effectiveness as a communicator.
Eden Langston
Eden Langston is a doctoral student in the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University. Her primary specialization is Multilingual Multicultural Education. In 2010, Eden earned her master’s degree in Teaching with a focus on Early Childhood Education and Reading from Kent State University. Since then, she has worked as a full-time Elementary teacher across five states, including here in Virginia, focusing primarily on third-grade students in all content areas. These experiences have shaped her research interests, such as the empowering and positive effects multilingualism and multiculturalism can have on all students, equity in education, policymaking that predominantly affects traditionally marginalized student populations, and multilingual, multicultural identity in early education.