The Center for Literacy, Language, and Culture (CLLC) is a new, thriving structure within the Department of Curriculum & Instruction.   In a dramatic and highly useful way, CLLC supplements rather than supplants existing programs.  The Center promotes academic collaboration across established "disciplinary boundaries" in ways that have recently emerged in scholarship and professional practice..  CLLC focuses comprehensively and in a formalized fashion on the themes of culture, literacy, language, and schooling, especially in urban settings. Here are primary functions of the Center for Literacy, Language, and Culture:

1. To augment and maintain within EDCI a close, vibrant, intellectual community of  scholar-teachers (our faculty members and our students) who are deeply committed to a number of interrelated themes and core beliefs:

• In many cognitive ways first-language literacy and second-language literacy are similar, but in cultural and affective aspects they can be quite different; literacy specialists need to understand both.
• Family literacy practices and home-school relationships are crucial, particularly with minority groups (with "minority" viewed in the broad sense of ethnicity, language, culture, and socioeconomic status) in urban and other contexts.
• An integrated approach to literacy involves an understanding of the relationship between oral language acquisition and the development of reading and writing competencies.
• Critical literacy addresses issues of power and empowerment in varied cultural and educational contexts.
• Minority achievement issues can be most effectively addressed when the nexus among language, literacy, cross-culturalism, multiculturalism, teacher education, and the public schools is identified.
• Basic and advanced technological applications promote literacy and language in the content areas.
• Teachers' attitudes and instructional behaviors in K-12 schools have important effects on student achievement.
• K-12 minority (and majority) students' attitudes, motivation, learning styles, and learning strategies are directly linked with achievement in urban and other settings.
• Assessing and measuring literacy and language development within multicultural contexts is important to high-quality education.
• Learning disabilities and other aspects of special education are highly relevant to literacy and language development, no matter what the cultural context or geographic area.

2. To emphasize excellence in research and the potentials of expanded research collaboration among CLLC faculty members. (Note that in some research areas below there is a direct conceptual linkage with the work of the Minority Achievement and Urban Education Initiative.)  The following represent just a few of the many examples of research that occurs under the framework of the Center for Literacy, Language, and Culture:

• Several CLLC faculty members already conduct and publish research on reading strategies. Some of these faculty members work in the area of native-language reading, while others work in the area of second-language reading. Minority reading achievement in urban areas is a big part of this focus. CLLC strongly promotes interdisciplinary research collaboration concerning reading strategies and reading achievement of minority (and majority) students.

• A number of CLLC faculty members currently study the multiple cultural contexts of teaching, learning, and teacher education. Some of these faculty members concentrate on the U.S., while others do comparative international studies. CLLC encourages cooperative research in this area.

• Within a critical-literacy context, some faculty members in the CLLC Program deal with cultural and ethnic identity as related to classroom practices. institutional and community beliefs, learner characteristics (learning styles and strategies, motivation, anxiety, and personality), teacher characteristics (instructional styles and strategies and other features). and family attitudes. Much fertile research in this area is arising from increased collaboration among CLLC faculty members.

3. To provide a fully supportive atmosphere in which the CLLC faculty members can grow and develop.  This is done by . . .

• Ensuring that Assistant Professors receive the kind of mentoring that enhances their teaching, research, and service and that moves them successfully toward tenure and promotion.
• Providing ongoing support to Associate Professors so that they advance in their careers and achieve Full Professorships.
• To eliminate to the extent possible any detrimental divisions among faculty at different ranks.

4. To develop an outstanding, interdisciplinary doctoral program focused on the thematic areas noted above.

• To develop a strategic initiative with goals, implementation steps, and deadlines in order             to expand systematically the number of doctoral candidates in the interdisciplinary areas of culture, literacy, language, and schooling
• To target excellent, energetic. and dedicated students and attract them to the CLLC doctoral program; these should be the very best students possible both nationally and internationally
• To offer a greater number of fellowships. assistantships, and other funding than ever before offered within EDCI.
• To provide systematic mentorship of CLLC students throughout their doctoral career here. 
• To make sure that excellence in advising is always a high priority.
• To have CLLC doctoral students to take a set of stimulating. challenging. interdisciplinary core courses (see next section).
• To offer CLLC doctoral students many opportunities for conducting, with their faculty mentors, professional-level research on any of the interdisciplinary themes mentioned earlier.
• To help CLLC doctoral candidates identify programs and individuals throughout the University of Maryland, College Park campus (and elsewhere) that share common research interests.
• To encourage CLLC doctoral students to publish and present their research in refereed venues, both nationally and internationally, while they are still in the doctoral program.
• To make sure that CLLC doctoral candidates all have the opportunity to teach relevant courses in EDCI in order to prepare for the instructional side of their future careers as uni versity professors.
• To provide opportunities for CLLC doctoral students to become involved with the Minority Achievement and Urban Education Initiative, the International Program Office, the Literacy Institute, the Reading Center, and a variety of other units in roles such as researchers, program evaluator, or program assistant.

5. To provide the very finest possible interdisciplinarv instruction in CLLC doctoral core courses, facilitated by ...

• Doing a preliminary needs assessment about CLLC doctoral students’ instructional interests.
• Conducting annual focus groups to assess ongoing instructional needs, knowing that the existing student evaluations do not provide detailed data.
• Inviting selected doctoral students to sit on a CLLC Instructional Advisory Board.
• Cooperative planning (by the faculty with input as appropriate from the doctoral students) the content and general processes of key interdisciplinary courses.
• Co-teaching these courses when possible and relevant.
• Including multimedia instructional techniClues as they might be relevant to CLLC core courses and enabling students to learn and practice the use of advanced instructional technologies.
• Providing an annual CLLC Instruction A ward to the faculty member(s) contributing the most to the strengthening of interdisciplinary teaching in culture, literacy, language, and schooling.

6. To highlight and share the outstanding research of CLLC faculty members and students and to connect our investigators with other excellent researchers throughout the U.S. and elsewhere by ...

• Sponsoring a funded, well-attended, campus-wide Eminent Speakers Series focused on culture, literacy, language, and schooling. CLLC will work with other relevant campus programs in planning and implementing the series.
• Offering well publicized, open-to-all research events in the Department and/or the College. These include panel discussions. formal research presentations. and brown-bag research luncheons on campus.
• Discussing ways that CLLC faculty members and students will collaborate with others on significant, interdisciplinary research in the thematic areas of interest.

7. To write collaborative grant proposals (for program development, assessment, and/or research) in areas involving any of the key themes of CLLC.

• The Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs, the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, the State Department, and other federal governmental agencies are eager to receive interdisciplinary proposals.
• CLLC faculty members will work very closely together on these proposals and will show involvement from extramural establishments (e.g., other institutions of higher education, public schools in general, Professional Development Schools, local school systems, and/or the Maryland State Department of Education).

The CLLC Program directly relates to the Strategic Plan of the College of Education and of the Department of Curriculum & Instruction. These plans call for enhancing the excellence of College faculty and for increasing faculty productivity. They also urge the strengthening of graduate education.  These initiatives are strongly linked with the mission and goals of the Center for Literacy, Language and Culture.