Service to Community
Local/National Activities
Community-based research projects
I have led or co-led two major community-based projects funded by Community-University Research Alliance grants. One, the LUCID project, involved three B.C. school districts with large numbers of Aboriginal learners; the other, the Maple Ridge Environmental School project, involves a single school district.
Both of these projects have entailed extensive communication with a variety of audiences including teachers and administrators, local and provincial politicians and policymakers, parents and children, journalists and scholars.
Research and community foundations
Since 1995 I have been actively involved in the Esperantic Studies Foundation, a private research foundation based in Washington, DC, which supports a wide range of projects on language issues addressing a variety of audiences, from specialized scholars to the general public (for example, we have funded multilingual websites for language learning, a summer language school, and a documentary by US film maker Sam Green).
At present I also sit on the Education Committee of the Vancouver Foundation, BC’s largest public foundation, which awards grants to variety of community-based projects each year.
International Activities
International educational research network
In 2006-2007 I led an effort, funded by an International Opportunities Fund grant, to develop an international network of researchers in imagination and education. This involved extensive correspondence with researchers in approximately 15 countries, the organization of two international meetings (in Vancouver, BC, and Canberra, Australia), and field visits to institutions in six countries.
International language policy work
Since 1996 I have been involved in organizing a series of occasional symposia on language policy (the Nitobe symposia) that bring together scholars, civil servants, civil society organizations and policymakers to discuss current language issues of international concern. The latest of these events (the 7th) took place in Reykjavik, Iceland, in July 2013, and focused on language policy in higher education.
In a related initiative, I am currently part of a 22-university consortium involved in the European Commission-funded project “Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe,” which aims to develop guidelines for the management of multilingualism in the European Community.