ASU professor Elizabeth Kozleski, a pioneer in special and inclusive education, has been honored by the world’s largest advocacy organization for students with exceptionalities.

The Council for Exceptional Children’s Teacher Education Division (TED) presented Kozleski with the 2011 TED/Pearson Excellence in Teacher Education Award at the council’s annual convention in Maryland, April 25-28. The Excellence in Teacher Education Award is presented by TED and Pearson Publishing to an individual who has demonstrated an exemplary commitment to special education teacher education, preparation of future leaders, or leadership in scholarly work and legislative advocacy.  Download Full Image

Kozleski, who joined ASU in 2006, has made substantial impact in all three of these areas, with more than 30 years of experience in the field as a special education teacher, researcher, consultant, advocate, administrator, and teacher educator. She is a professor of culture, society and education in the College of Liberal Arts’ School of Social Transformation and co-directs the ASU http://www.equityallianceatasu.org/" target="_blank">Equity Alliance center with Professor Alfredo Artiles.

“Dr. Kozleski’s career exemplifies all this award is intended to recognize,” notes Betty C. Epanchin, associate dean for Teacher Education and School Relationships at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. “Her contributions to the field are significant, substantive and principled. I have known her for many years and have followed her career with great admiration and respect. I marvel at how she accomplishes all that she does! Few people have as great a passion for their work as Dr. Kozleski does, and few have such a focused, disciplined and probing intellect combined with a moral compass as she has.”

At the opening session of the Council for Exceptional Children convention, the keynoter focused on empathy. The trait, he said, is often identified as most vital to success as a leader. It is a trait, coincidentally, that has characterized Professor Kozleski’s career from the start.

As a 20-something director of the University of South Florida’s daycare center, Kozleski discovered she was especially drawn to helping kids who came into the school and had difficulty fitting in for one reason or another.

“Perhaps they didn’t feel safe without their parents, or acted out in ways that made them outsiders with their peers. I tried to see the world through their eyes and to figure out how to help them become a part of the community,” says Kozleski. “I discovered I was good at figuring it out and good at sticking with it, helping send consistent messages to kids in different ways so they could reach out and explore the world.”

Over time, she became more and more interested in working with kids who had significant disabilities. In 1977 in Virginia, her first classroom assignment after finishing her master’s degree at George Mason University was with children who had been institutionalized prior to their placement with her; many had no language at all.

With little pedagogical research being done in this area, Kozleski had to figure out a lot of teaching strategies, behavioral therapies, and logistical processes on her own – and was absolutely fascinated by the challenges – from getting the kids safely to school to getting them socially ready to learn and focus, which first often meant grasping social concepts like taking turns. She also worked directly with students’ families, to help shape their home environments in ways that would support learning and growth.

Shortly after Kozleski moved to Colorado and opened the first public school classroom for children with autism in 1979, she recognized her impact would be greatest if she transitioned to teacher education, and she completed a doctorate in special education at the University of Northern Colorado in 1985.

“I realized I could spend the rest of my career working with 5 or 6 kids a year, but there were so many children that needed this help – 1,000 kids in Colorado alone had autism at that time and those numbers have grown exponentially,” Kozleski explains. “Meeting the learning needs of this population and helping kids move into general learning situations in typical classrooms means building capabilities in as many teachers as possible. So teacher education became a real passion for me and the focus of my research career as well as my teaching career.” 

While earning her doctoral degree, Professor Kozleski did an internship in the grants division of the U.S. Department of Education. She credits that early window into proposal evaluation and the grants process for what has become an exceptional track record in securing funding for research, further leveraging her own knowledge and experience for maximum reach. Indeed, Kozleski has obtained more than $26.4 million in sponsored projects throughout her career, with a sizable proportion of these funded projects aimed at preparing teachers or leaders in special education.

While serving as associate dean for research of the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Denver, before joining ASU, she was appointed chair of UNESCO’s International Research Lab on Inclusive Practices in 2005, a position she still holds today.

Humbled by the TED/Pearson award and recognition from her peers, Kozleski admits that reading the nomination packet afterwards was, in itself, just as tremendous an honor. Colleagues from across the country, including former students and many people she’s worked with over her career, put together an amazing set of letters recalling their experiences with her. Reflects Kozleski: “Discovering things I’ve unwittingly done or said that made a difference – that touched me greatly.”   

Industrial engineering doctoral student Michelle “Mickey” Mancenido, a native of the Philippines, is the 2011 winner of the Outstanding International Graduate Student Award presented by Arizona State University’s International Students and Scholars Office.

With the honor comes support from the Priscilla Richards Memorial Endowment for her Ph.D. studies in the School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, one of ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. Download Full Image

The award is presented to a student with a record of exceptional academic achievement, who also demonstrates a strong commitment to the community and involvement in the university.

In addition to her studies and research, Mancenido is an officer in the student division of the International Council of Systems Engineers, and has been elected its treasurer.

She has helped lead the organization by participating in international meetings and assisting in formulating goals for the future of the council.

Accepting new challenges

Mancenido also won the award on the strength of an essay about her career goals.

Her studies focus on industrial statistics – involving the design of methods to ensure quality control and optimal effectiveness of production systems.

“Mathematics has always been my strength, and I’ve found industrial engineering a valuable way to apply math,” she explains.

Mancenido, who grew up in the Philippines’ capital city of Manila, says she hopes to eventually help lead her country to the forefront of advances in the field.

She is a faculty member on leave from the University of the Philippines, where she began teaching several years ago.

She decided to pursue her Ph. D. at ASU, she says, because of the strength of the industrial engineering program, particularly the reputation in the statistics field of ASU Regents’ Professor Douglas Montgomery.

In her graduate studies in the Philippines, she found a textbook written by Montgomery to be especially valuable to her education, and one her favorite teachers there “kept telling us how professor Montgomery was the best teacher he had ever had.”

Since coming to ASU in the fall of 2010, Mancenido says her advanced studies are presenting her “with the most challenging year of my life.  But I’m excited to be challenged in this way. My knowledge is being expanded in so many ways.”

Inspired by teacher

Mancenido says she is dedicating her Outstanding International Graduate Student Award to Nong Ye, an ASU professor of industrial engineering and computer science.

Ye teaches “in a way that makes me look differently at problems and solutions. She always challenges us to think creatively, by discussing her own research interests and presenting more questions than answers,” Mancenido explains.

“Going into this program, information systems wasn't my strongest subject, but I did well in professor Ye’s course because I couldn't help but be inspired by someone who teaches the subject so passionately,” she says.

Ye says Mancenido “is among the most promising international students” she has taught, citing her commendable performance in course work and also her ability to develop new ideas through her research.

Contributing to the community

Away from the classroom, she has also found the opportunity at ASU to return to her love of competitive fencing.

Mancenido was a member of the Philippines’ national fencing team until a few years ago, when she left because of increasing work and school commitments.

Now she is competing for ASU’s collegiate fencing team. She recently placed first in the women’s individual foil and first in women’s team foil competitions at the Fencing Conference of Southern California.

In April, she helped lead the ASU women’s foil team in winning the 2011 United States Association of Collegiate Fencing Clubs national championship. Now she’s hoping to prime her skills sufficiently to qualify for a place on her country’s 2012 Olympics team.

The Outstanding International Graduate Student Award and similar awards go to groups or individuals who “exhibit characteristics of the (ASU) Sun Devil Way – achievement, engagement and responsibility.”

“This is a philosophy I strongly adhere to,” Mancenido says.  “In everything I do, I focus on what I can contribute to the community more than what I can achieve for my personal gain or recognition. Any achievements are just by-products of a passion to make a difference in the lives of others.”

Awarding dedication

Mancenido is the first recipient of funding from the Priscilla Richards Memorial Endowment.

The endowment was established in memory of Priscilla Richards by her mother, Oline Richards, and other family members.

Priscilla Richards worked at ASU from 1970 until June 1986, including positions in the Hayden Library and, for five years, as an assistant to the ASU international student advisor. In 1986 she was awarded the President’s Citation for dedication to international student programming.

The International Students and Scholars Office also recently presented the Outstanding International Undergraduate Student Award to Cong Wang, of China, a communications major, and the Outstanding International Student Leader Award to Ryan McKenna, of Canada, an economics and finance major in the W. P. Carey School of Business and ASU’s Barrett, The Honors College.

The Gadsden Elementary School District, representing eight schools and more than 5,000 students in southwestern Arizona, will benefit from a recent $43 million grant awarded to Arizona State University’s http://education.asu.edu" target="_blank">Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College by the U.S. Department of Education. The Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grant will provide funding for comprehensive school reform in Arizona, including a performance-based compensation system for teachers.

“This grant is extremely important to the Gadsden district, it schools, teachers and students,” said district Superintendent Ray Aguilera. “The grant allows pay for performance incentives for eligible teachers and principals so they can earn additional monies otherwise not available for salary increases.” Download Full Image

The http://www.gesd32.org/" target="_blank">Gadsden district, located in the rural community of San Luis on the U.S.-Mexican border, includes six elementary schools, a middle school and a junior high school. Aguilera reported the district’s most pressing challenge is hiring qualified teachers in its schools.

“This will help us retain highly qualified teachers and principals,” said Aguilera, who has led the district as superintendent since 1999. “This collaboration with ASU, in our isolated district, is a major breakthrough in providing high-quality personnel for our community.”

The Arizona Ready-for-Rigor Project featured in the original TIF grant proposal was led by ASU in partnership with the Arizona Department of Education and the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching. The project is a statewide network of schools in partner districts serving high-need students. The goals of the project include increasing student achievement, retaining highly effective educators and fostering exemplary school culture in the highest-need communities across Arizona.

“This is an important recognition that Arizona State University is embedded in the community and sees as a core mission the improvement of PreK-20 education in the state,” said ASU President Michael M. Crow. “Bringing in these kinds of resources means that children in Arizona will benefit, communities will benefit, and our Teachers College will benefit through learning about how to best incentivize classroom teachers.”

Aguilera applauded Teachers College and ASU for creating meaningful university-school collaboration with his district over the years, including programs that have focused on teacher development, special education, distance learning opportunities for district teachers and more.

“The ASU partnership that began in 2007 with the Content Academy has grown and expanded since that time  to allow us to provide master’s-level coursework to teachers,” said Aguilera, who has taught doctoral courses as an associate professor at Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi, superintendent certification courses at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and also taught in the Tempe (Ariz.) Kyrene Elementary School District before coming to the Gadsden district. “ASU brought us a ‘grow your own’ program for teacher aides, taught by our administrators that allows these future teachers to obtain their bachelor’s degree in education. The end result is better-prepared teachers as they enter the classrooms as highly qualified educators.”

Through the TIF grant program, the Arizona Ready-for-Rigor Project will pursue three objectives: 1) use of a statewide Ready-for-Rigor Support Center to work with a network of 71 historically struggling, high-need schools to achieve four key outcomes at each site, including ambitious achievement goals and effectiveness ratings; 2) use targeted, higher-than-average teacher pay-for-performance bonuses; use targeted, technology-enabled and district-based principal and/or teacher preparation programs; and prepare, recruit and retain highly effective principals and teachers in the hard-to-staff schools and areas; and (3) contribute to the research knowledge base on performance-based compensation systems by participating in DOE’s national evaluation study.

The 71 schools served by the grant represent more than 46,000 students across 16 districts that have partnered with ASU and Teachers College on teacher development and site-specific supports necessary to bring about comprehensive school reform.  Gadsden is one of 10 districts located in urban areas, while eight represent rural settings.

“The opportunities inherent in this grant and our partnership with this district are many,” said Virginia McElyea, executive director of the Arizona-Ready-for-Rigor TIF award. “Improving teacher quality, retention and effectiveness through professional development, coaching, peer evaluation and incentive pay are all important areas that will be positively impacted.”

McElyea, who earned her Ed.D. in curriculum and instruction from the University of Georgia in 1985, said the grant will provide long-term benefits to the district and community as well. “This provides us the ability to build and sustain a school culture focused on student achievement. We will create a professional development infrastructure that will enhance teacher practices and devise an evaluation system that includes standards, ongoing feedback by peers on instructional data, and we will use the data to make ongoing instructional decisions for each student.

“The quality of schools, based on high teacher quality, enhances the community’s ability to attract businesses and employers; as the schools go, so goes the community,” she added.

“Leaders in education, commerce and politics accept as truth that Arizona students can perform up to the level of the highest performing U.S. states and international competitors on globally benchmarked exams,” said Scott Ridley, Teachers College associate dean and associate professor, who wrote the grant proposal. “We know that key institutions in Arizona have not worked together with a coordinated sense of urgency to improve student achievement, and we will change that through this important award.”

Ridley noted that, like other states, Arizona’s students perform at both the highest and the lowest levels on standardized tests and pointed to research that the performance gap is thought to be associated with a gap in teacher effectiveness.

“Arizona students from the highest-need urban and rural communities perform least well on standardized tests,” he said. “That’s where this school-university partnership for educational reform will begin.”

The university-school partnership model created by Teachers College, with districts across Arizona, has been recognized as a national example and awarded $97.2 million in federal and private gifts over the past two years to support its objectives. In 2009, Teachers College was awarded $35 million in DOE grants, and entrepreneur and philanthropist T. Denny Sanford made an $18.8-million investment in the school to create the Sanford Education Project to expand the relationship between Teachers College and Teach For America.

The Ready-for-Rigor TIF grant is part of a campaign to simultaneously reform schools in high-need communities and ASU’s teacher education programs.

“ASU, in partnership with high-need communities and school districts, plans to improve teacher education programs in these communities by creating schools which provide these future teachers with strong mentors, and show them how to use data to foster students’ academic achievement,” said Mari Koerner, dean of the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College.

“We believe that using good classroom teaching models and data-driven student achievement results, this statewide initiative will simultaneously transform partner schools and improve ASU’s previous teacher preparation programs.”

The most recent award to the Teachers College is part of a five-year $1.2 billion federal program that seeks to strengthen the education profession by rewarding excellence, attracting teachers and principals to high-need and hard to staff areas, and providing all teachers and principals with the feedback and support they need to succeed.

The winning applicants were selected by a group of 60 independent, expert peer reviewers. They were judged on their comprehensive plans to develop, reward and support effective teachers and principals in high-need schools, based on evaluations that include multiple measures, including student growth.

Applicants also were required to demonstrate a high level of local educator support and involvement and a plan for financial sustainability after the five-year grant award period. Applicants received additional points for using value added measures, attracting effective teachers in hard to staff subject or specialty areas, and for being a first-time applicant.

“The approach used by ASU in providing relevant, effective and district-specific training for our district is truly a model that should be followed by all university teacher preparation programs,” said Aguilera.

ASU professor Madelaine Adelman will discuss how educators, students and administrators can work together to reduce anti-LGBT bias and bullying, April 14, as part of the University Dialogue Series.

The event takes place from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m., in the Social Science Building Conference Room 109, on the Tempe campus. Please RSVP by April 11 to institutionalinclusion">mailto:institutionalinclusion@asu.edu">institutionalinclusion@asu.edu. Download Full Image

The session begins with a presentation on bias and bullying in our schools and universities and its long- and short-term effects on individuals and institutions. Following the presentation, attendees will engage in dialogue to identify key issues and discuss how to be effective allies against bias.

Light refreshments will be provided and the event is free and open to the entire ASU community.

Adelman is an associate professor of Justice & Social Inquiry in the School Social Transformation. Her research and teaching focuses on law and society, gender violence, sexual and social justice and research methods. Adelman is a co-founder and co-chair of the Phoenix chapter of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network and co-chair of its National Advisory Council.

Sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the University Dialogue Series is a mult-year initiative intended to facilitate campus conversation and discussion around issues and challenges related to diversity. Attendess are expected to gain a better understanding of the topic and learn strategies that can be applied in the workplace or the classroom to advance a more inclusive environment.

The ultimate goal of the University Dialogue is to develop a welcoming climate for all individuals and viewpoints.

Learning to be a member of a culture is a primary developmental task for all young children. For most, it happens at home. But for deaf children around the world – more than 90 percent of them live with hearing parents and siblings – their assimilation into deaf culture, the world of sign, and their national culture is likely to begin in early-childhood programs.

A multidisciplinary research team of ASU faculty, doctoral students and alumni has won major support from the Spencer Foundation to better understand this acculturation process. Gathering video ethnography data in deaf kindergarten classrooms in Japan, France and the United States, the researchers aim to uncover the links between teaching approaches in signing classrooms and how children come to perceive themselves as members of deaf culture and of their wider culture: community and society. Download Full Image

In addition to bringing to the project a range of academic perspectives and insiders’ knowledge of the deaf world, the researchers are breaking new ground in other ways. It’s the first study of the enculturation practices of early schooling for the deaf to use a cross-cultural, comparative, ethnographic approach. It’s also the first to include videos – both as a research tool and as a final product – capturing typical days in kindergarten classrooms in schools for the deaf.

(See this 30-second http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQRYrG71Jas&feature=player_embedded " target="_blank">video clip of a typical day at the Phoenix Day School for the Deaf.)

Co-principal investigators for the three-year project are Joseph Tobin, an educational anthropologist and early childhood education specialist who holds the Nadine Mathis Basha Professor of Early Childhood Education in the College of Arts and Sciences’ School of Social Transformation; Thomas Horejes, assistant professor of sociology at Gallaudet University; and Joseph Valente, assistant professor of early childhood education at the Pennsylvania State University.

Horejes and Valenti are alumni of ASU doctoral programs in justice studies and education, respectively. Rounding out the team are Professor Tobin’s dissertation advisees Akiko Hayashi, Patrick Graham, and Jennifer Hensley, graduate students in ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College.

Horejes, Valente, and Graham are deaf. Horejes and Graham use American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate. Hensley is an ASL-English interpreter.

“Early childhood education programs in schools for the deaf have been largely invisible to all but their students and staff,” Tobin says. “Even parents of deaf children often lack a clear sense of what goes on in their children’s classrooms or how they communicate and interact at school. The ‘voices’ of deaf teachers and students have been under-utilized and underrepresented in research as well as in policy formation.

“Our study tries to open up space for dialogue among the stakeholders in deaf education,” Tobin says.

The research team’s methods are an adaptation of the video ethnography approach developed by Tobin and his colleagues in the projects “Preschool in Three Cultures,” “Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited” and “Immigrant Parents’ and Teachers’ Perspectives on Early Childhood Education.”

During spring break, the team videotaped a typical day in a kindergarten classroom at the Maryland School for the Deaf, and in June will do the same in a signing classroom in Toulouse, France. Last fall the researchers videotaped at Meisei Gakuen, a deaf school in Tokyo.

The 12 hours of tape from each school are edited down to a 20-minute video, selecting scenes to provoke discussion of key issues in deaf education, to give a sense of the kids’ daily routines, and to capture revealing or gripping moments, like a child making an intellectual break-through or a child experiencing frustration or new successes in attempts to communicate.

The edited videos will function as a rich and provocative cue for interviews with a widening circle of stakeholders.

First, the classroom teachers are asked to provide context and insight into their pedagogical choices. Then the children are asked for their reactions and reflections. Next, the video is the basis for focus-group discussions with the other teachers and director in the same school; then with parents at this school; then with teachers, directors, parents and children in five or more other schools for the deaf in each country; then to these categories of stakeholders in the other two countries; and finally to deaf education experts in each country.

Ultimately it is the reflections of stakeholders to the videos, rather than the videos themselves, that are the primary data of the study.

France, Japan and the United States present an ideal mix of common and divergent political, economic, social and cultural features, Tobin says. All three are highly urbanized, economically developed and have social service and insurance reimbursement systems that allow for both deaf education programs and for cochlear implants and other assistive technologies.

“All have kindergartens for the deaf, and in each of these countries,” he notes, “there is a lively and often acrimonious national debate about the best approach to deaf education, sign language and deaf culture.

“But the three diverge markedly in their views of the nation-state, language and language policy, citizenship, cultural identity, multiculturalism, and the public and private spheres,” says Tobin. “They also have very different educational systems, disability laws and services, forms of signing, and forms of deaf support and advocacy organizations.”

Influencing the future

The investigation is timely, as deaf culture and deaf education adapt to the spread of the cochlear implant and other technological changes. In all three countries involved in the study the percentage of deaf infants and toddlers given cochlear implants has grown exponentially over the last decade, and an increasing percentage of parents are opting for speech-only programs for their deaf children.

Some proponents of technological interventions believe advances in digital hearing-aids and cochlear implants will soon eradicate deafness and, therefore, the need for signing and deaf schools. Some deaf culture advocates see this shift as an ethnicidal, linguicidal threat. But many scholars of deaf education, including some who are strong proponents of deaf culture and of sign, see more potential than threat in cochlear implants and other new technologies, arguing that deaf culture – like other cultures – is continuously adapting to change and remaking itself.

“In the midst of these debates, we wanted to provide a platform for deaf children and their parents and teachers to express their positions about schooling, language, disability and cultural identity,” Tobin says.  “Analyzing the perspectives of each of these stakeholders can shed light – not just heat – on the discussion, and a nuanced understanding of what’s at stake.”

“Joe Tobin and his team are doing pioneering work at the interface of educational anthropology, disability studies, and the emerging field of Deaf Cultural Studies,” says Mary Margaret Fonow, director of the School of Social Transformation in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, who has received approval for the school to move ahead in planning new undergraduate and graduate degrees in disability studies at ASU. “By contributing to the ongoing evolution of deaf educational ideas and practice, they’re expanding the repertoire of the possible – and ensuring that kids have the chance to develop to their full potential.”

Outstanding performance in class and lab earns him top national fellowship award

Keith Christian’s view on the value of transportation engineering goes beyond its contributions to providing data and designs to improve travel efficiency. Download Full Image

The Arizona State University graduate student sees it from a big-picture perspective: It’s a vital tool for improving our quality of life, for shaping our built environment in ways that can foster a sense of community cohesion.

It’s that outlook that gives him a passion for this branch of engineering. And it’s that passion, says his ASU faculty mentor, professor Ram Pendyala, that has motivated Christian to do “work of superior quality” in the classroom and the research lab.

That track record has led to Christian recently earning one of the most prized national fellowship awards for transportation engineering students.

An award from the Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program – named for the late U.S. president and awarded by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration – will cover Christian’s tuition and support his research as he pursues a master’s degree. It also includes funds for him to attend the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board, one of the most prominent conferences in the profession.

The particular Eisenhower Fellowship Program award he received is among the most sought after, says Pendyala, a professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, one of ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

“Thousands of students from top schools apply. Only a few hundred are chosen to receive it,” Pendyala says.

Christian, a graduate of Sunnyslope High School in Phoenix, earned his undergraduate degree in civil engineering at ASU last year. But his ambition wasn’t limited only to fulfilling degree requirements.

“I wanted to get more involved,” he says. “I wanted to do something more than just going to class, listening to lectures, doing homework and studying for exams.”

Christian became an officer in the ASU student chapter of the Institute of Transportation Engineers and took an opportunity to work as research assistant for Pendyala.

During his undergrad years, he helped organize two major transportation research symposiums at ASU and has taken a lead role in compiling and editing voluminous reports on presentations made at the events.

He contributed to an ASU research project to develop software to help engineers devise solutions to increasing demands on transportation systems. He then helped provide computer-based training in the use of the new software.

He was involved in another project using advanced computational methods to implement a new research tool called the Transportation Analysis and Simulation System.

“These are extraordinary achievements for an undergraduate or even a first-year grad student,” Pendyala says.

In addition to the accomplishments outside the classroom, Christian maintained a high grade point average, kept busy with church activities and began a family with wife, Marjie. Their daughter, Ada, was born a year and a half ago.

His wife “has been a great help to me getting through college,” he says, “and my daughter is an inspiration for me.”

As an undergrad, Christian also began work that will shape his graduate-level research pursuits: an extensive study of ways in which engineering design could effectively promote more fuel-efficient, less-polluting travel, as well as other steps toward establishing environmentally and economically sustainable transportation systems.

He’s embarking on detailed analysis of travel behavior to document how various segments of the population differ in their travel habits and transportation needs.

He’ll also try to gain insights into how transportation policies and systems can better serve vital needs of disadvantaged groups such the elderly, low-income families, children and people with physical disabilities.

In addition, he’ll take part in research at ASU to modernize transportation planning by the Maricopa Association of Governments.

Christian’s route to transportation engineering studies may seem unusual. He started in Phoenix Community College as a fine arts major. But he says the progression was logical for him.

“I like drawing, painting and photography. But I also like math and technology,” he says.

He recalls meeting an engineer and getting a chance to shadow him on the job.

“I saw how his work involved design, and that there was kind of an artistic side to it,” he recalls. “So I saw how engineering sort of has all the things that interest me wrapped into one package.”

His motivation to pursue a career that performs a community service springs from a two-year humanitarian mission in Mexico he participated in through his church after he graduated from high school.

“As an engineer I can help alleviate of lot of problems we all face,” he says. “There will always be more transportation needs. There will always be new challenges. I’ll have opportunities to have an impact on the future.”

“He cares about societal issues and enhancing people’s lives,” says professor Pendyala, “I have no doubt his work is going to be significant and meaningful.”

Julian Bond, chairman emeritus of the NAACP National Board of Directors, will deliver the 11th annual John P. Morris Memorial Lecture, honoring the late John Peyton Morris, on April 14, at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.

Morris, a faculty member at the College of Law from 1968 to 1993, was committed to the principles of justice and equal opportunity, and he worked tirelessly throughout his life to foster diversity. Download Full Image

Bond, a legendary figure in America’s civil rights movement, will give the talk, "Under Color of Law" beginning at 4:30 p.m. in the Great Hall in the College of Law’s Armstrong Hall on Arizona State University’s Tempe campus. The event is presented by the John P. Morris Black Law Students Association.

“Julian Bond is one of the towering figures of the 20th century civil rights movement, and we are thrilled to bring him to campus,” said Paul Schiff Berman, Dean of the College of Law.

The lecture is free and open to the public, and tickets are available at http://morrislecture2011.eventbrite.com/.

In">http://morrislecture2011.eventbrite.com/">http://morrislecture2011.event... addition to serving as NAACP chairman, Bond was the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights law firm based in Alabama that is internationally known for tracking and exposing the activities of hate groups. He also served for 20 years as a Georgia legislator, in both the state house and senate, where he organized the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus.

While still attending college, Bond founded the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights, a student civil rights organization that directed nonviolent anti-segregation efforts. In the 1960s, he helped form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which played a major role in sit-ins, freedom rides and the 1963 March on Washington. And in 2002, he was awarded the National Freedom Award, which honors individuals who have made significant contributions to civil rights.

Bond has a bachelor’s degree in English from Morehouse College and holds more than 20 honorary degrees. Today, he continues to lecture about the history of the civil rights movement and is a Distinguished Professor at American University in Washington, D.C.

Past Morris lecturers include Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and chief executive office of the NAACP, Rossie E. Turman II, partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom, and Matthew C. Whitaker, Associate Professor of History, ASU.

Staci McCabe, Staci.McCabe">mailto:Staci.McCabe@asu.edu">Staci.McCabe@asu.edu
(480) 965-8702
Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law

If you’re going to be a bear, be a grizzly. If you are going to build a center of learning, build one that will foster and sustain new intellectual communities, and also one that will promote innovative relationships and collaborative research.

This is the goal of the Center">http://ccics.asu.edu/">Center for Critical Inquiry and Cultural Studies, a budding New">http://newcollege.asu.edu/">New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences unit within the Division">http://newcollege.asu.edu/harcs">Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies (HArCS) at Arizona State University’s West campus. It is designed to benefit both faculty and students and is driven by research clusters. Currently, there are five such clusters: oral history; philosophy, rhetoric and literature; sexuality in practice and theory; public art challenge; and law and governance. Download Full Image

“The center will support faculty scholarship and creative work by fostering intellectual dialogue, collaborative work and funds for visitors from whom we can learn,” says Monica Caper, director of the HArCS division. “This, in turn, will be of tremendous value to our students as it generates pedagogical ideas and best practices. The center is also sponsoring a wide range of events that will be of interest to students and faculty.”

Casper notes the timing and importance of such a center have converged to make it reality, explaining that historically and currently, funding for the humanities is at low levels when compared to the sciences. She says that while humanities scholars and artists have long had to investigate “internal” sources of funding, the creation of the center offers a new mechanism for vital support of New College faculty.

Already, a number of events have been presented through the center that feature faculty scholarship and have grabbed the attention of New College undergraduate and graduate students. Recent events have included: HArCS Assistant Professor Stefan Stantchev’s discussion from his book project, “Spiritual rationality: The Papal Employment of Embargo, ca. 1150-ca. 1550,” in which he argues that the main object of papal sanctions was not the achievement of foreign policy objectives, but the maximization of the papacy’s control over its own spiritual flock; the oral history cluster’s presentation of James Kofi Annan, a victim of slavery in the Ghanaian fishing industry, and his work against child slavery and human trafficking; visiting Irish studies scholar Sean Kennedy’s exploration of Samuel Beckett’s nationalist origins as glimpsed through the symbol of the bowler hat and what it came to represent following the formation of the Irish Free State in 1932; and the public art challenge cluster’s “Artistry and Innovations,” a display of recent creative works by ASU faculty and discussion of the mission of public arts research.

New College Division">http://newcollege.asu.edu/sbs">Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences professor Greg Wise, a member of the center board, holds a certificate from the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He says his experience with the Illinois unit has helped him realize the importance of the Center for Critical Inquiry and Cultural Studies (CCICS).

“During my graduate education at Illinois and in my work with the unit, I saw how productive and influential such an interdisciplinary critical center can be as a means of bringing together disparate scholars around key issues,” says Wise, who earned his Ph.D. in speech communication at the Urbana-Champaign campus. “During my graduate education, I found the unit to be a tremendous resource: it not only brought in internationally recognized scholars to speak and teach, but also sponsored important international conferences.” He adds, “The Center for Critical Inquiry and Cultural Studies will be a boon to our faculty and an exciting resource for our students. More than just being a showcase of critical interdisciplinary work, CCICS can generate incentives for faculty to collaborate in these ways and support the development of such projects.”

The center owes its beginnings to Eric Hadar, a donor who stepped forward in Spring 2008. With Hadar’s endowment, the original plan was to create a research center with HArCS. However, Casper visualized the center as a funding engine for research clusters across all of New College, each inclusive of faculty and student researchers. Following approval by the Arizona Board of Regents, the center was opened in Spring 2010.

HArCS Professor Eric Wertheimer, who came to New College in 1996 and also works with Ph.D. candidates in English on ASU’s Tempe campus, is the CCICS director and was instrumental, working with Casper, in establishing the center.

“My hope is that the five research clusters grow to not only be recognized for the quality of their activities within ASU, but nationwide,” he says. “I hope, too, that faculty begin to see these clusters as ways to experiment and take risks intellectually; to ask questions that disciplinary constraints might not allow. Finally, I hope that the clusters, and the center too, become permanent features of our division and New College, making us distinctive and enviable to other public colleges.”

Marianne Kim helped create the public art cluster with assistant professor Barry Moon, which also includes faculty from ASU’s">http://herbergerinstitute.asu.edu/"> Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. An assistant professor of interdisciplinary arts and performance, she says the cross section of faculty expertise within a single research cluster will foster interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary strategies for research.

“The center and its research clusters can be a point of departure for faculty to work together in finding new opportunities and funding at a level they might not be able to successfully accomplish on their own,” she notes. “The center will encourage and financially support innovation and community; it will be a platform for faculty to share their research to the ASU community as well as spark new collaborative projects.”

Already, the Public Art Challenge research cluster recently earned a commission from the Scottsdale (AZ) Museum of Contemporary Art. Kim says the center has helped her break out of her comfort zone.

“I would have never found myself working on an interactive sound sculpture or applying to SMOCA for a commission if I wasn’t originally supported by CCICS,” she reports. “CCICS gave me that extra push to get out of my comfort zone and to sit down with my research cluster and wrestle with ideas of public art, gaming and digital culture.

“I think the center has the potential to be the hub for New College faculty to exchange and develop new ideas in research and teaching. It can be a much needed space to discuss big ideas, instead of just the business of the day.”

With his sights set on a career in clinical psychology, 17-year-old Alfredo Artiles was told at the registration window of Guatemala’s Universidad Rafael Landívar that he’d need to select a sub-specialty to pursue for the first three years of the five-year degree program in psychology. One of the three options to choose from was special education.

“I had never heard of this field,” Artiles recalls. “So I figured it must be new and there was probably a lot of work to be done in that area. I thought I would give it a try and marked that box.”   Download Full Image

The rest, as they say, is history, for he not only quickly fell in love with the subject area but also with the children he worked with, says Artiles. The work filled a deeper passion as well.

“Having lived my formative years in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Guatemala during times of political and sociocultural struggles, I saw rampant poverty and social inequities all around me,” he explains. “And growing up within the Jesuit educational system, from kindergarten through college, my outlook on life has always been grounded in social justice and service to others.”

After college, he taught special education and was a school principal before going on to earn a master’s and doctorate in special education at the University of Virginia. On the faculty at ASU since 2004, Artiles today is recognized as a thought leader in the fields of special education and educational equity. A professor of culture, society and education in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ School of Social Transformation, he also co-directs the http://www.equityallianceatasu.org" target="_blank">Equity Alliance at ASU with Professor Elizabeth Kozleski.

On April 9, Artiles will have the honor of presenting the Wallace Foundation Distinguished Lecture at the 2011 annual meeting of AERA, the American Educational Research Association. The Wallace Lecture is one of only three invited addresses delivered at the conference. The accolade comes ten years after Artiles received the Early Career Award of AERA’s Committee on Scholars of Color in Education.

AERA is the national interdisciplinary research association for approximately 25,000 educational researchers in the United States and abroad. Some 13,000 are expected to attend the 2011 meeting in New Orleans. In the audience will be college and university professors, leaders in school systems, in federal, state and local agencies, foundations and the private sector – all devoted to leveraging educational research and scholarship to improve education and serve the public good. Inducted as an American Educational Research Association Fellow in 2010, Artiles completes two years of service this spring as vice president of AERA’s Divison G: Social Contexts of Education.

“Professor Artiles’ work on issues of race and special education has been influential beyond the U.S.,” says Allan Luke, research professor in the faculty of education at Queensland University of Technology, who will present this year’s AERA Distinguished Lecture. “Many of us in Australia and the Pacific have looked to his incisive scholarship to reexamine how educational systems categorize those cultural and linguistic minority students who sit at the margins of mainstream schooling. Artiles is a brilliant scholar, meticulous writer and, as importantly, a generous colleague with a staunch commitment to social justice. His Wallace lecture in New Orleans will be one of the highlights of the annual conference.”

In his address Artiles will draw on his comprehensive studies of racial disproportionality in the mild or subjective disability categories to articulate a framework for studying shifting views of difference and competence that emerge at the intersection of multiple, often contradictory, policies and practices in U.S. urban education. 

Disability labels can be used to offer key support systems to people with disabilities; they grant rights and afford access to resources. But a “disability” label, Artiles says, can also have dire long-term consequences for struggling learners, such as persistent low academic achievement, a greater chance for grade retention and school dropout, placement in the juvenile justice system, and poor post-school outcomes. Our challenge is to disentangle the paradoxes that emerge in our efforts to create equitable educational systems.

“If an English language learner is having difficulty with reading, is this due to an ability difference or a linguistic difference?” he asks. “There is an emerging discussion about whether language differences are now being construed as ability differences in certain school districts around the nation in light of the increase of English language learners identified as having disabilities in recent years.”

Artiles sees great promise for the interdisciplinary study of racial disparities in special education to contribute to a new generation of scholarship on educational (in)equity and the transformation of schools’ responses to difference.

“It’s exciting to be in a field that increasingly draws from interdisciplinary frameworks at a time when societal views of difference are shifting and the boundaries are blurring between general and special education,” observes Artiles, “As researchers, we’re solidly focused on evolving learning and teaching strategies that help all children develop their full potential.”

Alfredo Artiles’ Wallace Foundation Distinguished Lecture, titled “Toward an Interdisciplinary Understanding of Educational Inequity and Difference: The Case of the Racialization of Ability,” will be archived as a video viewable from the AERA website after the conference, at AERA.net.

Celebrated novelist and social commentator Walter Mosley will present “The Only True Race is the Human Race” as this year’s A. Wade Smith Memorial Lecture on Race Relations at Arizona State University. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be given at 7 p.m. April 5 in the Old Main Carson Ballroom on ASU’s Tempe campus. A book signing will follow the lecture.

Mosley, who has written more than 35 books in genres ranging from the crime novel to literary fiction, nonfiction, political essay, young adult and science fiction, devotes his writing to exploring race relations by providing a compelling and multifaceted perspective of the social, political and moral issues intertwined in today’s cultural issues. Download Full Image

This prolific writer was born in Los Angeles in 1952 to an African-American father and a mother of Polish Jewish background. In his acclaimed fiction, Mosley has explored the black experience in America over the past seven decades, beginning with the migration of African-Americans from the Deep South to his native Los Angeles in the post-World War II era and through post-Obama election-era New York.

Mosley, who has lived in Manhattan since 1981, features New York’s environs, as well as those of Los Angeles, in his two popular private eye mystery series: Easy Rawlins in Los Angeles and Leonid McGill in Manhattan.

“I wrote the Easy Rawlins series as homage to my father’s generation. They went to Central Avenue, they fostered blues, R&B and jazz, they moved us forward into the future. And nothing was written about them. I felt like I needed to write about those people’s history in order to have the story at least somewhere on the shelves,” said Mosley in a May 23, 2010, interview with ASU Regents’ Professor Alberto Ríos on “Books">http://www.azpbs.org/books/authordetail.php?id=331">Books & Co.,” a television show that explores the craft of writing from the author's perspective that is produced by Eight, Arizona PBS.

“But Leonid McGill, it’s my story. Leonid McGill is my century and my world. That’s a very important thing to me, to be able to make that move,” Mosley told Ríos.

“Devil in a Blue Dress” is perhaps Mosley’s best known novel and his first to be published. It introduces readers to Easy Rawlins. The story, as well as his crime novel “Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned” have both been adapted for film.

Other fiction include his latest Leonid McGill mystery, “When the Thrill is Gone,” out this month, and “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey,” which was released last year.

Scheduled for release this April is “Twelve Steps to Political Revelation,” a thought-provoking exploration of the different forms that oppression takes in everyday lives and how to break free.

Mosley’s short fiction has appeared in a number of publications, including the New Yorker, GQ, Esquire, Los Angeles Times Magazine and Playboy. His nonfiction has been published in the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek and The Nation. His honors include an O’ Henry Award, Grammy, Sundance Risktaker Award, and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Mosley’s journey to eminence was unconventional; in 1977, he graduated from Johnston State College and worked a variety of jobs, one being that of a computer programmer for more than a decade. The catalyst to his work as an author was when he decided to quit working in order to study literature full-time at City College of New York. With the help of one of his mentors, Mosley was encouraged to take advantage of his diverse ethnic background by infusing it into his writing. Since then, Mosley’s writing has garnered high acclaim through his strong usage of diction and formation of multidimensional characters in creating invigorating narratives. In 2005, Mosley received an honorary doctorate from City College.

The A. Wade Smith Memorial Lecture on Race Relations, presented by ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, is held to celebrate and honor the work Smith accomplished during his lifetime. Smith, a former professor and chair of sociology at ASU, dedicated much of his life to the improvement of race relations on campus and within his community. The lecture series was established after his death in 1994 through funding from his family and friends in their hopes to continue Smith’s work of improving race relations in Arizona.

The past 15 lectures have been given by prominent individuals in public service or at universities. The inaugural lecture was with Princeton University’s Cornel West, speaking on “Race Matters.” Other distinguished lecturers were: William Julius Wilson, Morris Dees, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Roger Wilkins, Michael Eric Dyson, Mary Frances Berry, Johnnetta Cole, Ray Suarez, Christopher Edley Jr., Robin Kelley, Darlene Clark Hine, Leonard Pitts Jr., Julianne Malveaux and Kimberlé Crenshaw.

Additional information about the A. Wade Smith Memorial Lecture on Race Relations is online at http://clas.asu.edu/smithlecture">http://clas.asu.edu/smithlecture">http://clas.asu.edu/smithlecture or by phone at 480-965-7765 or email at clasevents">mailto:clasevents@asu.edu">clasevents@asu.edu.

Written by Chanapa Tantibanchachai.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Carol Hughes, carol.hughes">mailto:carol.hughes@asu.edu">carol.hughes@asu.edu
480-965-6375
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences