Oregon Professor to Talk About Educational Needs of English Learners

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Ilana Umansky

Ilana Umansky, assistant professor in the College of Education at the University of Oregon, will give a lecture at noon Friday, Oct. 13 on the University of Arkansas campus as part of the Department of Education Reform lecture series. Her lecture is titled "Understanding and Supporting the Educational Needs of Recently Arrived Immigrant English Language Learner Students: Lessons for State and Local Education Policy."

RSVP online for lunch on the lecture website. Deadline to RSVP is 1 p.m. the Wednesday before the lecture. It will take place in Room 343 of the Graduate Education Building.

Umansky's work focuses on quantitative and longitudinal analysis of the educational opportunities and outcomes of immigrant students, emerging bilingual students, and students classified in school as English learners. She studies course-taking and access to core academic content, the effects of the English learner classification system, and how educational outcomes vary for students in different linguistic instructional environments.

She is collaborating with school districts in San Francisco and Salem and the Oregon Department of Education as they work to improve educational opportunities for their English language learner students.

Prior to getting her doctorate at Stanford University in sociology, Umansky worked in educational equity and quality research in Nicaragua, Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, and other countries in Latin America. Her work has been recognized by the National Academy of Education, the Spencer Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, and the American Educational Research Association's Bilingual Education Special Interest Group.