Retired biotech executive, Dr. Alan Cheung was the first Asian American on the Montgomery County School Board, where he served from 1990 to 1998. His interest in education has never waned, and he now volunteers in a Chinese after school program at Huayuan Chinese Academy, which teaches the language and culture of China in up to 7 elementary schools in Montgomery Co.
He helped Huayuan Academy Chinese School win a grant from STARTALK a component of the National Security Language Initiative, which was launched in 2006 during the George W. Bush administration. Certain critical languages to U.S. national security, economic development and job creation are not being taught in U.S. schools. Among these are Arabic, Persian, Udu, Brazilian, Portuguese, Russian, Hindi, and Chinese.
This year University of Maryland's National Foreign Language Center, in cooperation with the Department of Defense and other agencies, funded 150 programs in 48 of the 50 states. Dr Cheung's program is a Chinese language immersion program which also integrates science, technology, and math. This past July, the first 44 students went through the 3-week program at Gaithersburg Elementary School. See Montgomery Community Television news segment about the Chinese language immersion program.
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Dr. Cheung was encouraged to apply for the grant again next year, as the evaluators were impressed with his program. He is also invited to make a presentation at the STARTALK national conference in October to be held in Portland, Oregon.
The generous Dr. Cheung donated all his compensation for running the program back to the school to fund a 10 week, 1 day a week after-school extension of the immersion course.
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This exceptional volunteer and grant winner, Dr. Alan Cheung, is a member of the Ingleside at King Farm community, a Rockville continuing care retirement community.
A luncheon presentation about joining the IKF Club will be held on Tuesday, September 17th11:00 am - 1:30 pm, Seating is limited. RSVP to Chelsea by calling 240-499-9019.
Kimberly Hartke is a publicist for Ingleside at King Farm.
