Letter from the TCALL Director
TCALL Director Harriet Vardiman Smith
with Associate Professor of Adult Education
and TCALL Principal Investigator, Dr. Mary Alfred
Dear Readers,
As this issue goes to press in late September, our thoughts are with those of you in areas of the state that are still suffering the effects of Hurricane Ike. As part of Texas A&M University in Brazos County, TCALL escaped direct impact from Ike. At the direction of our new President, Dr. Elsa Murano, our campus will soon be hosting faculty and over 1,000 undergraduates from the Texas A&M University–Galveston campus, accommodating them with classroom space and housing them in community members’ homes to prevent their education being interrupted for an entire semester.
At TCALL, we similarly hope to bring an element of continuity in providing services, resources, and communication to adult and family literacy programs and practitioners statewide. If there is any way we can be of assistance as local programs rebuild in the coming months, we hope you will let us know. As we are all aware, the adult learners and families served by literacy programs are likely among those most affected by natural disasters such as this, making it all the more important to sustain and extend the work you do in building the capacity of individuals and entire communities.
In this issue of The Quarterly, our goal is to update you on several important statewide initiatives intended to support the professional growth of literacy educators and build the capacity of literacy programs and their leaders. Most of the initiatives you will read about are led and supported by Texas LEARNS and their partner state leadership projects including the GREAT Centers, Texas Adult Education Credential Project, Texas Family Literacy Resource Center, and the Clearinghouse Project at TCALL. Two articles describe other initiatives at TCALL: The First Lady’s Family Literacy Initiative for Texas, for which technical assistance has been provided through TCALL since 1996; and the Barbara Bush Fellowships that support the family literacy-related research of doctoral students at Texas A&M. You will read about some of the work of the Barbara Bush Fellows in an article by 2007-2008 Fellows Rebekah Haynes, Petra Robinson, and Megan Terry.
Finally, I wish to share important news about TCALL itself. Since the departure of TCALL’s faculty Center Director Dr. Dominique Chlup on January 1, 2008, I have served as Interim Director of TCALL while the search for Dr. Chlup’s successor continued. Because the faculty search has failed to locate another person with Dr. Chlup’s unique combination of qualifications, our adult education faculty, department and college leadership have decided to cancel the faculty search and to name me as TCALL Director on a permanent basis.
I will be joined in collaborative leadership of the center by Dr. Mary Alfred, Associate Professor of Adult Education, who will serve as TCALL’s Principal Investigator. Having served as mentor and advisor to TCALL’s doctoral fellows for the past year, Dr. Alfred brings extraordinary skills and experience in academic and research leadership. Her research interests include: adult learning and development among marginalized populations; equity and social justice in education and the workplace; immigration and learning; and welfare reform and women’s economic development. Dr. Alfred currently serves as Editor of Adult Learning, a practitioner-oriented journal published by the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE). She is on the editorial board of Adult Education Quarterly and New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development. Dr. Alfred is the incoming president of the Commission of Professors of Adult Education and serves on the executive board of AAACE. I hope you will join me in welcoming Dr. Alfred to the TCALL leadership team.
Harriet Vardiman Smith
TCALL Director
