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Ed. Magazine

HGSE Remembers Barbara Alexander Pan

Barbara Pan
 

Barbara Alexander Pan, a retired HGSE faculty member with 23 years of experience at the school, passed away on Wednesday after battling a lengthy illness.

Pan touched the lives of many at the Ed School. She began her HGSE career as a research coordinator in September 1988 and was appointed to the faculty in 1994. She taught courses in language and literacy development, and conducted research on language development among children living in poverty and children growing up bilingually. Pan was extremely dedicated to her students. In 2008, she earned the Morningstar Family Teaching Award, which recognizes an HGSE faculty member for his or her generosity in providing time and support to students. She continued, even after her retirement from HGSE in July 2009, to work closely with doctoral students on whose committees she served.
"Barbara was deeply committed to supporting her students--by incorporating them as collaborators in her research, by editing their writings with great rigor tempered by gentleness, and by setting a high standard for excellence in research," said Professor Catherine Snow.
Pan received her Ph.D. in 1988 from the psychology department at Boston University, having completed a thesis on children learning English and Chinese in Chinese immigrant families. She was an active participant in training researchers in the use of CHAT and CLAN when those facilities were introduced in the 1980s. She was a participant in the Early Head Start Research Consortium, which carried out a 17-site longitudinal study of the long-term effects of early intervention with poor families.
In 1994, Pan and eight other families established The Chinese Language School in Lexington, Mass., in which she was the first curriculum director.
A memorial service will be held this Saturday, February 19 at 2:00p.m. in the Eliot-Lyman Room at HGSE. All are invited.
Pan is survived by her husband, Tai-sheng Pan; her son, Noah Pan, of Cambridge; and her sisters Linda Myers of Mill Valley, Calif., Diane Vinson of Laurinburg, NC, and Martha Fletcher of Raleigh, NC.

Ed. Magazine

The magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

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