Melinda Martin-Beltran

Dr. Melinda Martin-Beltrán is Associate Professor of Language, Literacy and Social Inquiry in the College of Education, Associate Director of the Maryland Initiative for Literacy and Equity, faculty affiliate at the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity, and the Language Science Center. Dr. Martin-Beltrán earned her Ph.D. in Educational Linguistics from Stanford University where her research was awarded a Spencer Foundation dissertation fellowship. Her research focuses on learning/teaching practices that cultivate multilingualism and lead to greater educational equity for minoritized, multilingual learners. Dr. Martin-Beltrán was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Academy of Education and served as PI on two grants from the Spencer Foundation. She served as a co-PI on a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences, US Department of Education focusing on multilingual learner vocabulary development that involved teacher professional development and the creation of bilingual curriculum materials. Dr. Martin-Beltrán was a senior researcher on an i3 grant and a Promise Neighborhood grant working together with immigrant advocacy community organizations focusing on multilingual family engagement in schools. Currently, she is co-PI on a project funded by the National Science Foundation (in collaboration with scholars across three states) supporting research with multilingual learners, families and teachers doing math together. Dr. Martin-Beltrán is PI on a Spencer Foundation grant investigating dual language teacher learning that involves collaboration with teachers in local schools understanding bilingual pedagogical practices. Informed by this research, Dr. Martin-Beltrán established Maryland’s first Dual Language Bilingual Education Graduate Certificate program. She has published over 30 peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters. She is on the Editorial Board of the International Multilingual Research Journal and has served as officer for the Second Language Research SIG and Bilingual Education Research SIGs in AERA. Prior to graduate school, Dr. Martin-Beltran was a bilingual elementary school teacher in the US and Latin America.