Li-Jen Kuo, an assistant professor in the College of Education’s Department of Leadership, Educational Psychology and Foundations, has been named a 2008-09 National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow.
The fellowship award of $55,000 is intended to assist with Kuo’s salary replacement and research expenses for the fellowship period. Twenty fellows were selected this year from a competitive pool of more than 150 applications from scholars of education.
Fellowships are administered by the National Academy of Education, an honorary educational society. They are funded by a grant from the Spencer Foundation. Now in its 22nd year, the fellowship program has more than 600 alumni who include many of the strongest educational researchers in the field today.
The National Academy of Education believes the fellowships enhance the future of education research by developing new talent in the many disciplines and fields represented by the scholars. These fellowships are the oldest source of support for education research, nationally or internationally, for recent recipients of the doctorate.
Kuo came to NIU in 2006.
Her research interests include biliteracy development, developmental psycholinguistics, metalinguistic awareness development, bilingual cognition, literacy development in culturally diverse contexts, collaborative reasoning, development of critical thinking and argumentation skills.