Project E3 Team

Assistant Professor Tracy Spies from UNLV's Department of Early Childhood, Multilingual and Special Education is fluent in Spanish and focuses on English language learning. With a master's degree in educational leadership from Sam Houston State University and a doctorate degree in Hispanic bilingual education from Texas A&M, Dr. Spies has fifteen years experience as a teacher and principal.

In 2010, she received the National Milken Educator Award as one out of fifty-five educators in the nation. She has secured more than $3 million in grants.

Tracy has been very involved in community service working in the areas of hunger and ELL. Her research agenda includes:

• Second language acquisition

• The effects of the second language on the native language

• Effective teacher pedagogy in native and second language

• Dispositions of school leaders identified as successful with English language learners

Professor Sharolyn Pollard-Durodola earned her Ed.D. from the University of Houston in curriculum and instruction, focusing on second language acquisition and bilingual education. Prior to UNLV, she served as an associate professor of literacy at the University of Denver's Morgridge College of Education.

She has research and experience in English language and literacy inventions and professional development practices for teachers of English language learners.

Sharolyn has goals to further develop UNLV's English language learning program into a nationally competitive program and to continue expanding collaborations between the university and Clark County School District to improve language and literacy practices.

Assistant Professor Alain Bengochea explore the ways in which young, emergent bilingual learners' language and literacy development are supported across home, community, and school contexts. His work focuses on equitable practices and structures that legitimize emergent bilinguals' languaging and learning opportunities.

He embraces an analytic toolkit that includes statistical, ethnographic, and discourse-analytic approaches in efforts to provide comprehensive accounts of sociocultural influences on language and literacy development. He also integrates diverse epistemologies, paradigms, and methodologies, with the aims of empowering minority learners despite the ideological barriers and contradictions around bilingualism that may exist at the community and school levels.