Professor Jin Sook Lee, from the Gevirtz School’s Department of Education, has been appointed Associate Dean of UC Santa Barbara’s Graduate Division. The Graduate Division promotes excellence in graduate education and ensures our graduate students are successful and prepared for careers across the professional spectrum. Stellar graduate students attract world-class faculty, serve as mentors and teachers for undergraduates, conduct cutting-edge research, and go on to leadership positions in California, the United States, and the world.
Jin Sook Lee is a Professor in the Department of Education, where she has also served as the department’s graduate advisor. She earned her doctoral degree from Stanford University. Prior to coming to UCSB in 2003, she was a faculty member in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her research focuses on how sociocultural variables influence language teaching and learning processes among English language learners, heritage language learners, and bilingual students. Her current projects include: 1) the study of heritage language maintenance efforts in immigrant families; 2) the examination of social and academic trajectories of bilingual students in a 50/50 dual immersion classrooms; and 3) the development of community-university partnerships to introduce high school students to the study of linguistics and to provide them with academic mentoring (with Dr. Mary Bucholtz and Dr. Dolores Inés Casillas). She has published in journals such as the Review of Research in Education, International Journal of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education, Foreign Language Annals, Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, Bilingual Research Journal and Language, Culture and Curriculum. She was the 2008 recipient of the Foundation for Child Development Young Scholar’s Award and a 2012 Senior Fulbright Core Specialist Research Award.