Three Alumni from the College of Education recognized as Orange County Teachers of the Year: Vivian Chang '15 (Master's in Educational Technology), Leslie Whitaker 05' (Master's Education-Curriculum and Instruction) and Matthew Smith 09' (MBA) and Math Credential.
Former Men of Color in Education (MCE) student Mark Bibian 18' has full circle moment teaching and being a mentor for other men of color who inspire to be school teachers.
Special education teacher Ainaria Johnson '23 who was also a recent commencement student speaker at this years graduation, continues her work focusing on preschool and transitional kindergarten students with varying disabilities.
Centers Focusing on Community Engagement
NRCAL - The National Resource Center for Asian Languages (NRCAL) at is one of 16 Language Resource Centers in the nation funded by the U.S. Department of Education to improve the nation's capacity for teaching and learning of Asian languages including: Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Khmer. Over the past year, NRCAL has served over 2,000 PreK-16 students and more than 400 preK-12 bilingual teachers participated in professional development trainings nation-wide (grant funded).
CCT - SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union Center for Careers in Teaching has students who participate in our undergraduate programs: Titan Future Teachers (TFT) and Men of Color in Education (MCE), graduate a ½ year early than their counterparts serving 45 majors and representing an average of 900 students per year.
Impactful Programs
High School Equivalency Program (HEP) - This education program serves students from Migrant and a seasonal farmworker family to help them attain a high school equivalency certification and continue to postsecondary education. Since it began in 2015 it has served 340 eligible agricultural workers and immediate dependents at five different community-based sites (2 in Coachella Valley, 1 in Ontario, 1 in Anaheim/Santa Ana, 1 in Fallbrook/Vista) with 266 receiving high school equivalency. Over the next 5 years, the program is on track to serve another 400 participants.
Summer Language Academy - Since its 2016 inception the program has served 1097 students across 4 districts, and engaged more than 120 pre and in-service educators in professional learning related to radically inclusive teaching with newcomer and emergent plurilingual students.
Projects ELICT and AMIELA - These initiatives aim to foster plurilingualism in the student body of CSUF by partnering bilingual professors with bilingual students in their discipline to collaborate on a lesson plan delivered in a language other than English as well as promoting it in k12 schools. Last year, over 70 students and 20 faculty participated in the programs.
