Kathy Escamilla awarded the Robert L. Stearns Award
The CU Boulder Alumni Association honored Kathy Escamilla, professor educational equity and cultural diversity, with 2016 at the annual awards ceremony on Oct. 13.
Initiated in 1953, the year Robert Stearns resigned as the sixth president of CU Boulder, the Stearns Award recognizes members of the faculty and staff for extraordinary achievement or service in any one or combination of the following areas: teaching, service to the university, work with students, research or off-campus service.
Escamilla has dedicated three tireless decades to studying, educating, and advocating for America’s bilingual students, and today ranks among the nation’s foremost scholars of bilingual education.
“Her work has led to shifts in the way teachers view the potential of their students and the value of knowing how to read and write in two languages,” said a school principal.
Escamilla is especially interested in the development of bilingualism and biliteracy in the early elementary grades for Spanish-speaking minority populations in U.S. schools. Eschewing traditional reading approaches for bilingual students, she focuses on the cultural and linguistic resources available to each child and evaluates them on their progress in both languages to better help them develop reading and writing skills in each.
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