Researchers

Dr. Kim Song, Associate Professor of the Department of Educator Preparation at UMSL, is a principal investigator of the SEE-TEL grant. For this collaborative grant project, Dr. Song plans the two main activities: 1) engaged and reflective 7 TESOL online courses and 2) a five-day summer institute professional development workshop with the two Co-Principal Investigators, Drs. Dorner and Kim.  Dr. Song also serves as the main liaison with the LEA partners at Bayless, Carthage, Columbia Public School, and Kansas City Public School Districts. She will also generate the annual performance reports collaboratively with Co-PIs and the financial staff,  which include involved cohort members’ transformed performance to serve ELs with equitable and linguistically and culturally responsive teaching tools.

Dr. Lisa Dorner is an Associate Professor of Educational Policy at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her research falls into three main areas: language policy and planning in education, educational policy implementation, and immigrant family integration in “new” spaces (like rural Missouri). She is one of the co-principal investigators of the SEE-TEL project. She is also a proud fellow of the Cambio Center.

Dr. Sujin Kim is an assistant research professor and co-principal investigator of the SEE-TEL project at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. Her research interests include immigrant students’ identity construction, teacher training in TESOL, new media digital literacy, online/hybrid course development, and qualitative research in areas of critical discourse analysis and digital ethnography. She is currently working on partnership building with LEAs, developing 7 online TESOL courses for SEE-TEL Cohort teachers, and coordinating the SEE-TEL research plan.

Edwin Nii Bonney is a doctoral student in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He assists with data collection, planning, and organization of the SEE-TEL summer program.

Dr. Emily Crawford-Rossi is an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy analysis at the University of Missouri, Columbia. She serves as key personnel on the SEE-TEEL project. Her research expertise includes educational theory and policy, immigration policy, and how K-12 educational leaders incorporate ethics into their practices. With the SEE-TEL collaborative, she is helping with data collection, analysis, and evaluations tools for the project. She is also a part of the planning team for the 2018 Summer Institute.

Christine Pajunar Li-Grining will serve as a project evaluator focused on quantitative data collected as part of SEE-TEL. Raised in a multilingual household where her parents spoke different Filipino dialects, Li-Grining is an Associate Professor at Loyola University of Chicago in the Department of Psychology. Her research includes longitudinal studies on children’s academic, social, and cognitive outcomes in non-experimental and experimental contexts. In addition, she works with local education and community agencies serving children and adolescents in Chicago.

Dawn Thieman, ED.S., UMSL, is the SEE-TEL Grant Project Coordinator.  Dawn’s role is to support the grant administrators: Drs. Song, Dorner and Kim. She works with the day-to-day operations of the project. Dawn prepares all of the financial reports with the College of Education and UMSL financial staff, assists and organizes grant related activities, including communication with district and community partners.  She works to assure grant goals and objectives are collected and documented for grant reporting deadlines.

Lina Trigos-Carrillo works as a postdoctoral fellow in the SEE-TEL project at the University of Missouri, Columbia. Her research focuses on critical perspectives to writing, the sociology of knowledge, and community/family literacy of minorities and emergent bilinguals across the Americas. Her role in the SEE-TEL project includes collaboration in parent engagement initiatives, professional development, and program evaluation.

Yuyang Zhao, is a PhD student majoring in Educational Psychology at University of Missouri, St. Louis. He specialized in qualitative research and methodologies. Currently, he helps with SEE-TEL survey development and related qualitative analysis.