One Million Dollar Grant Awarded to Claflin University’s Dr. Nan Li
One Million Dollar Grant Awarded to Claflin University’s Dr. Nan Li
- August 20, 2007


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Dr Nan Li, Assistant Professor of Education, holds letters of congratuations from Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) sent to her after she was awarded the U.S. Department of Education grant.

 

The high illiteracy rate among the Hispanic immigrant population in the United States is being seriously addressed by Claflin University’s Assistant Professor of Education Dr. Nan Li, who has been awarded a one million dollar federal grant from the U.S. Department of Education based on her research into this problem.

 

This is Dr. Li’s second grant. As a result of the first grant, a grant for $35,200, the School of Education formulated a training program for 10 of Claflin’s teacher candidates, who visited schools and Hispanic homes to help both students and their parents improve literacy and their use and pronunciation of English. The first grant allowed Dr Li and her students to develop good lesson plans with effective methods for assessing progress and to collect data, which was added to Dr. Li’s research.

 

The national-local model project was then developed by Dr. Li, with the aid of her students’ involvement, and is known as English Acquisition: The National Professional Development Program. This will meet national needs and “prepare qualified teachers who can work effectively with English-language learners (ELL).”

 

Dr. Li, who said she was thrilled when she learned of the award, believes that in addition to the collection of data, her thorough research into the national demographic changes that are affecting and will continue to affect school populations contains valuable findings for all teachers who contributed to the grant. Included in the many facts and statistics in the report are the findings that “over four million school-aged children are ELLs and ten million students come from homes in which a language other than English is spoken.”

 

The report also lists the advantages of the experience gained by Claflin University’s teacher candidates, stressing that “the data collected will be used to strengthen the teacher education program at Claflin to better prepare all the teacher candidates to provide effective instruction to ELL students.”

 

Under the five-year grant, Dr. Li’s team of teacher candidates will undergo one week of training prior to working in four school districts: Orangeburg School Districts 3, 4 and 5 and Calhoun County School District.

 

Dr. Li says her goal as a university educator is to undertake research, to advance her teaching skills and to provide a service. The federal grant allows her to do all three while also providing students with valuable experience, assisting the Hispanic population’s integration into the community and benefiting the School of Education and Claflin University through resources the grant will provide.

 

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