Four Doctoral Students Selected
As TCALL Barbara Bush Fellows

Friday, April 24, 2009

The Texas Center for the Advancement of Literacy and Learning (TCALL) selected graduate students Priya Darshini Kurup, Tiffany Lipsett, Rose Anna Santos and Jeeyoung Shin as the 2009-2010 Barbara Bush Fellows. Each will receive $25,000 in fellowship funding made possible by the generous support of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy.

The Barbara Bush Fellowships give doctoral candidates the opportunity to conduct cutting-edge research in the field of family literacy. These fellowships consist of a one-year award, which may be used to offset the cost of travel expenses to conferences, dissertation research, and/or tuition, fees and maintenance while a student is enrolled at Texas A&M University. During their fellowship year, students will have the opportunity to present their work at national family literacy conferences and publish their research in peer-reviewed journals.

Priya Darshini Kurup, a doctoral student in human resource development, proposes to investigate the effect of work-life balance on parental participation and retention in family literacy programs, a challenge for many family literacy program organizers.

Tiffany Lipsett, a doctoral student in curriculum and culture with an emphasis on visual literacy, plans to examine the interaction between parents and children, and the social and cultural context in which literacy skills are learned in the home.

Rose Anna Santos, a doctoral student in higher education administration, is interested in literacy development, especially how fathers facilitate literacy development within their families. She will research how fathers in family literacy programs, specifically Hispanic fathers, view parenting and literacy role-modeling to their children.

Jeeyoung Shin, a doctoral student in English as a Second Language, will conduct an intervention study with language-minority families using a conceptual framework to identify key issues to understand literacy patterns and experiences of language-minority families.

The fellows were formally introduced as the Barbara Bush Fellows by former First Lady Barbara Bush at the Celebration of Reading Program April 23 in Houston.

Jenna Kujawski, 979.845.7917, jkujawski@tamu.edu

Harriet Vardiman Smith, 979.845.6615, hsmith@tamu.edu

2009-2010 Barbara Bush Fellows

L-R: Rose Anna Santos, Priya Darshini Kurup, Tiffany Lipsett & Jeeyoung Shin