CSRB Mission and Vision Statements
Mission
Our mission is multifaceted and includes the following goals:
- Conduct and promote high-quality scientific research on bilingualism and language acquisition
- Facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration
- Foster a better understanding of the factors that impact bilingual language proficiency across the lifespan
- Foster better understanding of the cognitive, social, educational, and health implications of bilingualism, biculturalism, and linguistic minority status
- Provide a broad range of training opportunities for UTEP students and faculty, as well as researchers from other institutions
- Provide consultation for researchers, educators, or health service providers who work with bilingual populations by design or necessity
- Leverage the bilingual skills of UTEP students
- Foster a better understanding of the global relevance of bilingualism and biculturalism in the scientific community
- Disseminate research results to the scientific community, as well as educators, health service providers, and lay people
Vision
We aspire to develop a world-class consortium for scientific research on bilingualism and become a national hub for bilingual research and training. In order to advance in this direction, we plan to conduct research that is methodologically rigorous, interdisciplinary, and international; obtain federal research funding for faculty- and student-initiated research projects; and publish in top journals in psychology, linguistics, communication disorders, education, and related fields. Doing so will allow us to attract top graduate student applicants; train undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty from UTEP and elsewhere in a broad range of content areas and methodologies; and provide experiences for researchers to work with diverse populations.
With increased visibility, we hope to be considered as a national resource for consulting on bilingual content, methodology, and population-specific research strategies and to attract high-profile scholars for colloquia, workshops, and collaborative research projects. Activities that we hope to incorporate in the future include sponsoring colloquia and workshops, training postdoctoral scholars, hosting a visiting scholars program, and conference organization. We also hope to impact bilingual and linguistic minority communities through education and outreach activities.