Esperanza Alcalá-Collins
(University of California, Berkeley)

Esperanza Alcalá-Collins is an Assessment Specialist for a Bay Area elementary school and a second year Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley. Her program of study is Education in Language, Literacy and Culture. Esperanza has eight years of classroom experience and has worked as an adjunct faculty member at Western Oregon University in the Bilingual/Multicultural Education Program. Before starting graduate school, she was a community activist working toward improving the educational opportunities and experiences of linguistically and culturally diverse students and their families. Currently she brings that interest to her areas of research in restructuring schools with linguistically and culturally diverse student populations, parent and community involvement, and effective assessment practices for language minority students.

Manuel Correia

Manuel Correia is a first year Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley in the Graduate School of Education in the area of Language, Literacy and Culture. He holds a master's degree in Multilingual Education from CSU Stanislaus. Previously, he was a second grade bilingual Spanish teacher and also taught Portuguese to fourth and fifth graders in a language enrichment program. Currently, he is working as a graduate student researcher in a Bay Area elementary school. He is interested in issues of school restructuring, language policy, and the assessment and evaluation of bilingual students. He was selected by the California State University Chancellor's Office as a recipient of the Sally Cassanova Pre-Doctoral scholarship and is currently studying as a Luso-American Development Foundation scholar.