Hi, and welcome!

Welcome to my personal website. This site will post pages from my own work in teaching, research, and education policy. It is not an institutional site, and it is maintained solely by me.

My present job (as of July 1, 2003) is as the Founding Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts at the University of California, Merced. This new campus (the 10th in the University of California system) is scheduled to open in August, 2005. This job is my first major administrative position. I have held faculty positions at Stanford University (currently on leave), University of California, Santa Cruz, and at Yale University. I decided to make the leap into being part of the start-up team for UC Merced because I believe this is the best way for me to make a difference, especially in the lives of students who ordinarily would not have access to a first-rate higher education experience. Please click here to read the press release of my appointment.

My major areas of research are in language acquisition, bilingual development, the education of language minority children, and educational equity. My teaching interests, in addition to specialized courses on my research topics, are in research methodology and courses that prepare teachers of English Language Learners. In education policy, I have worked on advancing social debate on issues of bilingual education, affirmative action, and the improvement of the quality of educational research.

This site is organized around my work in the categories of TEACHING, RESEARCH, POLICY, BOARDS, and PERSONAL. I'll put new stuff under NEWS. An added feature is the Google search function which will search through my entire directory, though not the links. For those who are used to finding information through my old site at Stanford, I'll maintain that link as ARCHIVES.

I would welcome any reactions and thoughts, but due to the volume of e-mails I receive, I may not always be able to respond. You can e-mail me at: kenji.hakuta@ucmerced.edu ... and hint, make sure that you put a distinctive subject header and I'll be more likely to pay attention!