Gerald Campano, professor and chair of the literacy, culture and international education division of Penn’s Graduate School of Education, with María Paula Ghiso of Teachers College, Columbia University, and Bethany Welch of the  Aquinas Center, has received the 2018 David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English from the National Council of Teachers of English for the book Partnering with Immigrant Communities: Action Through Literacy.

Throughout his career, Dr. Campano has been committed to creating opportunities for students to mobilize their identities and cultural resources in the literacy curriculum. Dr. Campano is the current convener of Practitioner Inquiry Day at Penn’s Ethnography in Education Forum, which emerged as a response to a growing interest in teachers’ involvement in critical action and participatory research. His current project, a six-year research partnership with a multiethnic, multilingual Catholic parish and its school and community center, explores how universities can foster sustained and ethical collaborations with community-based organizations, with particular emphasis on faith-based centers. The study examines the literacy practices and discourses employed when individuals negotiate social, cultural, linguistic and institutional boundaries that promote educational justice and immigrant rights. Dr. Campano argues that one powerful way universities might cultivate equitable community relationships is through democratizing research processes to include the knowledge and questions of students, teachers, families, and school and neighborhood leaders.