LARC Advisory Board

Ray Clifford - Chair

(PhD, Minnesota) Dr. Clifford is the academic leader of the largest foreign language instruction program in the world; the Defense Language Institute (DLI). Responsible for both resident and nonresident teaching programs, his duties extend to supervising academic support functions, including teacher professional development, course development, technology integration, and the management of of personnel and fiscal resources needed to support these activities. He has taught German at the elementary, secondary, and university levels and has served in the US Army as a computer systems analyst.

Prior to working at DLI, Dr. Clifford was Chief of the Slavic and Germanic Languages Department at the Central Intelligence Agency Language School. During his government service, Dr. Clifford has received numerous awards for exceptional performance, including the Department of the Army decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service. He serves on national task forces and boards, including serving as Chair of the NATO Bureau for International Language Coordination; as Consultant for ACTFL's Proficiency Testing Programs, and as a Member of the National Assessment of Educational Progress Steering Committee for Foreign Languages.

LARC is proud to join Congressman Sam Farr in honoring Dr. Clifford's years of service at the DLI (PDF, 83KB).

Robert J. Blake

(PhD, University of Texas, Austin) Dr. Blake is a professor of Spanish linguisitcs at UC Davis and Director of the Davis Second Language Acquisition Institute. He served as Chair for the department of Spanish & Classics at Davis from 1994-1998 and as Professor III from 1997 to the present. Dr. Blake earned his M.A. in Spanish Literature at Middlebury College and a B.A. in Spanish from UCLA. He was named the Mercer Brugler Distinguished Teaching Professor in the College of Arts & Sciences, 1989-91, University of Rochester. He has been the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including: The Bridging Fellowship with the Department of Computer Science, University of Rochester, Fall 1998; the Mellon Fellowship in Humanities, 1986-87, University of Pennsylvania; N.E.H. Travel to Collections Grant for C.A.I. curriculum development; and a FIPSE grant (co-PI), 1997-2000, UC Davis.

Dr Blake has published widely in the areas of Spanish syntax, history of the Spanish language, and applied linguistics. He is co-author of Al corriente (3rd ed.), a second-year Spanish textbook based on authentic reading materials for the teachings of Spanish, including Nuevos destinos, a CD-ROM published by McGraw-Hill, Annenberg/CPB Project, and WGBH. Currently on the Davis campus he is helping develop a chat tool for distance learning, Remote Technical Assistance (RTA).

Nina Garrett

(PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) Dr. Garrett has taught second language acquisition theory, language teaching methodologies, and computer-assisted language learning at Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, and George Mason Universities. She has been president both of the International Association for Language Learning Technology and of the Executive Board of the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium. Her teaching, publications, and consulting focus on the relationships among language acquisition theory, language pedagogy, and technology, with particular emphasis on providing a psycholinguistically sound basis for pedagogy and materials development.

Since 1998 she has been Director of Yale University's Center for Language Study, which provides leadership, professional community, resources, and program evaluation for the teachers of over 50 languages at Yale.

James Pusack

(PhD, Indiana University) Dr. Pusack is Associate Professor of German and Director of the Center for International and Comparative Studies at the University of Iowa. He is Co-director of Project for International Communication Studies (PICS) and Co-director of the Language Learning Multimedia Applications Consortium. His primary area of specialization is second-language acquisition and language production and publication of extensive multimedia materials that foster the use of authentic foreign video in language teaching, as well as multimedia computer software. Dr. Pusack will advise and monitor projects with particular reference to software development, authoring alternatives and technology training.

Elvira Swender

Pending...

Michael Cole

Michael Cole earned his Ph.D. in Psychology at Indiana University in 1962, and was a Professor at Rockefeller University from 1969-78. From 1978 to present, Professor Cole has been a Professor in the Department of Psychology and in the Department of Communication at UC San Diego. At present he is University Professor of Communication and Psychology in the University of California.

Cole is best known for several decades of cross-cultural research on learning and development in relation to literacy and schooling. He has spent the past two decades developing effective approaches to improving educational and developmental environments and activities for American children from a variety of ethnic and social class groups. His current research focuses on the creation and sustainability of model cultural systems designed to promote children's development.