Last updated on November 11, 2025
Hello! I usually never make posts as I prefer to have this website more as a portfolio, but I wanted to share my recent experience working in a Summer Team Impact Project through GMU’s OSCAR program. I’ve recently graduated and this was one of my last major experiences at GMU and I’m extremely proud of the work I did through the project.
I applied to Dr. Ellen Serafini and Dr. Jihye Moon’s Language, Educational Access, and Social Equity in Local Bilingual Schools. The project was to take place during the summer of 2025 and be split up into two teams: one at a bilingual Spanish-English school and the other at a bilingual Korean-English school. I decided to apply to the Spanish team. I was enrolled in Dr. Serafini’s SPAN 485 – Spanish in the Schools where we focused on bilingual pedagogy, the history of bilingual education in the US education system, language policy, the benefits of multilingualism, and the role of Spanish in our local educational context. When I learned about the project, I was excited to apply the knowledge I learned in the class and my own personal experience as a Spanish bilingual person to the project and help my local community as much I as I can.
Our project goal was to gain a better understanding of stakeholder needs and experiences through a community-based needs analysis. We collected data using variety of qualitative methods like participant classroom observations, linguistic landscape, semi-structured interviews, and stakeholder document discourse analysis. The Spanish team and I ran into some bumps during the research process, but we nonetheless prevailed through and adapted despite the roadblocks. The Spanish team and Korean team’s work slightly diverged in how we gathered our data but regardless, we were united in our efforts to foster community investment into bilingual education.
After three months, we presented our work at the OSCAR celebration. I was excited to present our work to our fellow OSCAR companions and others who attended the event. I was elated to see how invested others were in our topic and goal. I had the opportunity to present our work to Ilryong Moon of the FCPS school board. At the end of the event, they announced the winners of best poster, and my colleague Melody and I won best!
It was an absolutely amazing experience to do this project. I’ve gained valuable skills in collaboration and organization on a larger scale, adaptability, and communication. I wouldn’t give this experience up for world.
Here is an article about the team at the OSCAR celebration published by GMU: https://www.gmu.edu/news/2025-09/student-researchers-show-their-work-oscar-celebration-research-and-impact
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