Dr. Franca Dell’Olio
Franca Dell’Olio, Assistant Professor of Educational Administration and Director of the Administrative Services Programs, a graduate and undergraduate of Loyola Marymount University and the School of Education, most proudly rejoined her Alma Mater in 2005. She earned B.A. degrees in Spanish and History, her Single Subject Teaching Credentials in the like fields, her M. A. in Bilingual Cross-Cultural Education, and a Professional Clear California Administrative Services Credential. She most recently earned a Doctorate in Educational Leadership, Administration and Policy (Ed.D.) from Pepperdine University. From 1992 until rejoining the LMU family in 2005, she served the Culver City Unified School District community as a high school Spanish and Social Studies teacher, Coordinator of programs such as Advanced Placement, Site Improvement, and English Language Development, Assistant Principal of Attendance, Student Activities and Discipline, Assistant Principal of Guidance, Instruction and Curriculum, and ultimately as Principal of Culver City High School.
Her studies and research agenda include:
- Creating and sustaining leadership capacity, collaborative communities of practice, and cultures of excellence
- Cycles of Inquiry and Reflection as they relate to student success and overall school improvement efforts
- Leading the charge for success: Our English Language Learners and implications for the Principal
- Parent and Community Involvement within Schools
Dr. Kristen Anguiano
Kristen Rizzo Anguiano, Assistant Professor of Quantitative Methodologies in the Department of Educational Leadership recently joined the Loyola Marymount University School of Education Faculty after completing her PhD in Psychological and Quantitative Foundations at The University of Iowa in 2006. She teaches courses in Educational Assessment & Research, Research Design, Educational Statistics, Human Development & Learning and holds a Dissertation Data Analysis seminar. She commonly serves as a quantitative faculty member on doctoral candidate student dissertation committees, and also serves as the School of Education Faculty Statistics Advisor. Dr. Anguiano previously taught courses in Educational Measurement, Educational Statistics, Educational Psychology, Research Methods, and Cognition & Instruction at Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois.
Her research agenda and interests include early adolescent student motivation and student achievement goals, gender motivation and achievement differences at the early adolescent levels, P-12 assessment, particularly relating to standardized assessments & the NCLB Act (2002), and the achievement gap, specifically related to urban high minority secondary school youth. Dr. Anguiano is a former P-12 instrumental music teacher, having served for five years as an elementary band director in the Iowa City Community School District. She holds a bachelor's degree in music with an emphasis in flute performance, and a master degree in music education. In her spare time she enjoys Latin dancing with her husband, Ignacio.
Dr. Kathryn Lindholm-Leary
Kathryn Lindholm-Leary received her Ph.D. at UCLA, where she worked at the Spanish Speaking Mental Health Research Center and the Center for Language Education and Research. She is currently a professor of Child and Adolescent Development at San Jose State University, where she has taught for 19 years. At San Jose State, Kathryn received a Teacher-Scholar award, was a finalist for the President’s Scholar award, and was a San Jose State nominee for the prestigious Wang Family Excellence award. Her research interests focus on understanding the cognitive, language, psychosocial, and societal factors that influence student achievement, with a particular emphasis on culturally and linguistically diverse students.
Dr. Lindholm-Leary has worked with two-way immersion and other bilingual programs for the past 20 years and during that time has evaluated over 30 programs and helped to establish programs in over 50 school districts in 10 states. Dr. Lindholm-Leary has the most comprehensive longitudinal data on bilingual students, particularly students in two-way programs, in the country. She regularly consults with various state departments of education, including the California State Department of Education and also the US Department of Education. She has authored or co-authored four books and many chapters and journal articles on the topics of dual language education and child bilingualism and has presented her findings at over 100 local, state, national and international conferences. Her research was also used by previous U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley to establishing Title VII funding and program priorities for two-way immersion programs, and has been cited in the Congressional Record.
www.lindholm-leary.com
Dr. Laurie Olsen
Dr. Laurie Olsen is the Executive Director of California Tomorrow, a non profit research, advocacy and technical assistance organization committed to building a fair and inclusive multicultural society. Her career spans three decades of work throughout the nation as a researcher, writer, speaker, advocate, and provider of professional development and technical assistance to communities and educators on creating equitable, high achieving schools that meet the needs of English Learner, immigrant and language/cultural minority communities - preschool through higher education - and that honor and celebrate the cultures and languages of all children. A major focus has been high school reform, immigrant education, and educational access.
She has authored dozens of publications on immigrant education including the award winning Made in America: Immigrants in U.S. Schools, And Still We Speak: Stories of Communities and Schools Maintaining Culture and Language, “We Speak America”, and a series of publications for equity-centered school reform. Most recently, she authored a five-volume series on “Meeting the Needs of English Learners in Secondary Schools”, and the policy report “Ready or Not: Immigrants and School Readiness”, raising concerns about whether current policies will create appropriate, accessible and responsive access for immigrant children and families. Since 1986, she has served as the architect and director of California Tomorrow’s research agenda and equity-centered school reform work at the school site, district, community and policy levels. Currently she is the Chief Consultant to two major initiatives - the Los Angeles County Office of Education’s Biliteracy Initiative, and the Promise Initiative (a five-county collaborative to develop new models for English Learner students). Dr. Olsen holds a Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Studies in Education from U.C. Berkeley, has served on the Board of the National Coalition of Advocates for Students, was founding President and a current Board member of Californians Together (a statewide coalition for English Learners).
Contact: Laurieo@californiatomorrow.org
California Tomorrow
1904 Franklin Street, Suite 300
Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 496-0220, ext. 321
Dr. Robert Rueda
Robert Rueda is a professor in the area of Psychology in Education at the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. He completed his doctoral work at the University of California at Los Angeles in Educational Psychology and Special Education, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition at the University of California, San Diego. His research has focused on the sociocultural basis of motivation and instruction, with a focus reading and literacy in English learners, students in at-risk conditions, and students with mild learning handicaps. He has most recently been affiliated with two major national research Centers, CREDE (Center for Excellence, Diversity, and Education at the University of California at Santa Cruz), and CIERA (Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement at the University of Michigan), and serves on the Advisory Board of CRESST (Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing at the University of California at Los Angeles). His most recent work is examining motivational and sociocultural aspects of reading comprehension, and recently completed work has focused on how paraeducators mediate instruction and provide cultural scaffolding to English-learners, and on issues of reading engagement among inner-city immigrant students in a central city community. He has consulted with a variety of professional, educational, and government organizations, has spoken at a wide range of professional meetings, and has published widely in the previously mentioned areas. He served as a panel member on the National Academy of Science Report on the Overrepresentation of Minority Students in Special Education, and also as a member of the National Literacy Panel (SRI International and Center for Applied Linguistics) which recently released its report on issues in early reading with English language learners.
http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~rueda/