About Us

RUBilingual is an outreach organization formed by graduate students of the Bilingualism & Second Language Acquisition program in the Spanish & Portuguese Department at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Our mission is to inform, educate, and provide specific strategies and resources to parents and educators to support linguistic development across multiple languages and critical approaches to multilingualism.

In October 2011, a group of five graduate students whose primary research involved bilingual populations asked the question: How can the academic community make the most recent investigations and established benefits of speaking more than one language accessible? It was in this moment the five founding members decided to create RUBilingual, an outreach community whose goal is to inform, educate, and provide specific strategies and resources to parents and educators that support literacy development in both languages. The founding members received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Spring 2012 to initiate workshops and forums in the New Brunswick area. Through this support, the organization held its first workshop on April 14th, 2014 for bilingual parents and children at the Rutgers graduate residential life housing.

In May 2015, RUBilingual also became one of the first U.S. branches of Bilingualism Matters, a European research network that disseminates information about multilingualism. Founded in 2008 with the aim of promoting the benefits of bilingualism by bridging the gap between science and society, Bilingualism Matters now counts with over a dozen offices throughout Europe and the United States. Its headquarters are located at the University of Edinburgh, directed by Dr. Antonella Sorace. More information can be found at https://www.bilingualism-matters.org/.