Title: Graduate Research Assistant
Groups: Project Personnel
Xiaowen Chen (Sylvia) is a full-time doctoral candidate in the College of Education and Human Development studying multicultural and multilingual education. She is currently working as a graduate assistant in the ACE-STEM project. Prior to the Ph.D. program, she got her master’s degree in TESOL from the University of Pennsylvania. Sylvia has more than 6 years of work experience in teaching Chinese Mandarin. In addition to teaching Mandarin, she has focused three years of her ESL teaching efforts for refugees and immigrant populations. Sylvia credits being a language teacher with helping her develop authentic caring for the language learning process and her students and notes that it has also improved her own effectiveness as a communicator. Creating a comfortable, supportive, and safe environment for everyone to share ideas and concerns is really important for her. Sylvia notes that her experiences as an international student from China bring critical multicultural perspectives to her study and research. Her research interests also relate to international students’ education equity in higher education.