Jin Sook Lee, Professor in the Department of Education at UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School, has received a 2019-20 Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award. Mentoring graduate students is a vital component of UCSB’s mission as a research university; it includes training graduate students for careers in research and training, and preparing them to meet the highest professional and ethical standards as scholars and educators. Up to three recipients are selected campus-wide, each of whom receives an honorarium of $1,000 and a framed certificate. UC Santa Barbara’s Academic Senate honored Lee’s achievements as an exemplary mentor at the Faculty Legislature meeting on April 30, 2020.
Lee was particularly noted for having led 65 Ph.D. and MA committees for the Department of Education in her 17 years at UCSB, as well as being part of 13 Ph.D. and 8 Master’s committees for the larger campus. She also served as the graduate advisor for the Department of Education from 2012-2016, advising over 150 graduate students in that time.
Jin Sook Lee is a Professor in the Department of Education. 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.