Volunteer, Job, & Research Opportunities

Job Opportunity - Adoptee Outreach Director

2009-03-12T15:47:27Z

Holt International is currently recruiting for the position of Adoptee Outreach Director. The complete job description is posted in the employment section of Holt's website, http://www.holtintl.org/employment/employment.shtml. Interested applicants are encouraged to apply online by Friday, March 20, 2009.

Call for Participants - IKAA NYC Research Panel

2008-12-13T13:05:35Z

My name is Sara Docan-Morgan, and I am an assistant professor of Communication at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. I am in the process of organizing a research panel for the International Korean Adoptee (IKAA) mini-gathering in New York City in April, and I am sending a call for prospective participants.

My goal is to organize an academic panel that examines the current state and future directions of Korean adoptee research from an interdisciplinary perspective. Ideally, participants will be researchers (i.e., graduate students, faculty members, or other professional researchers), who can discuss their own research agendas in a general sense and then provide an overview of the future directions of adoption research in their discipline/area (e.g., Psychology, Anthropology, Ethnic Studies, Education, etc.). Ideally, participants will be Korean adoptees themselves.

This panel will allow for a multivocal discussion that provides participants the following: information related to current adoption research, an understanding of how multifaceted and interdisciplinary the field of Korean/Transracial adoption research is, and a sense of where this field is headed in the future.

If you are planning to attend the Mini-Gathering (April 16-19, 2009, in NYC) and would like to participate in this panel, please respond to docan-mo.sara@uwlax.edu with the following information:
- Your name, position, and affiliation
- Your discipline
- 1 paragraph describing the contributions you believe you can make to this panel
- Whether or not you are a Korean adoptee

Unfortunately, funding is not available for panel participants. Responses should be received by December 23, 2008.

Acceptance will be dependent on fit for the panel, as well as the number of responses received.

Call for Submissions – Book Project on Worldwide Korean Adopted Adults

2008-12-03T03:07:55Z

Are you a Korean adopted adult leading an interesting life? Are you proud and excited about the life you live and want to share it with others? Are you doing interesting things, following your dreams, creating and inspiring others? If so, please answer this Call for Submissions for my book project about people like us. My hope is to inspire younger Korean adoptees with stories of courage, success and liberation, as well as show the world the varied cultures we’ve grown up in and that we are a unique people some times caught between two worlds. My final hope is that other Koreans can learn about us and we can bridge the divide between our cultures.

The book project will be a photo essay, coffee table style book with beautiful photos, imagery and stories. I would like to feature as wide array of Korean adopted people as I can, from around the world. I am accepting submission requests now. Please forward your request for a submission form to me, Corissa St. Laurent, at: corissa.st.laurent@gmail.com or download if included in this posting. Thank you!

Corissa St. Laurent (formerly DeSaulnier)

Adoptee Research & Raffle

2008-12-03T02:57:58Z

Hello! My name is Amy Martin and I’m a Korean adoptee in grad school studying design at the California College of the Arts. I'm doing an art/design project (not a psychology or sociology project) about Korean adoptees. It is a really short survey online for adoptees. I will be making a small booklet of sorts so people have the option of being credited at the end of the booklet.

Also, you name will be entered in a raffle for a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=QU_2brzTW4B8rMYSWL4K65IQ_3d_3d

Deadline is Friday, December 5^th

Worldwide Survey among Overseas Adopted Koreans 2008

2008-10-17T23:13:39Z

How are you doing? How are you really doing? In the last five decades, over 150,000 South Korean orphans were adopted into western families - yet, little is known about their well-being and social development. You can make a difference by telling us about your adoption. Should the South Korean government continue international adoptions? Tell us about your personal experience by participating in this survey. This is the first comprehensive survey on Korean adoptees living world wide. The aim of this project is to investigate the status of human welfare among the South Korean adult adoptees (16 years or older), and to improve the situation for adoptees living abroad and returning to South Korea. This project has been initiated by the South Korean Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs, and is supported by International Korean Adoptee Services, Inc. (InKAS) - a non-profit social welfare organization in South Korea. This research is conducted by Dr. Daniel Schwekendiek, an overseas Korean adoptee and a socioeconomic researcher at Seoul National University. We guarantee that data will only be used for the particular survey purpose and will not be passed on to anyone else. We will also publicly announce major findings of the survey in January of 2009 at www.inkas.or.kr(www.inkas.org).

We are looking forward to your participation. Please take your time (approx. 10-15 minutes) to fill out the questionnaire - one small step for you, but one giant leap for the international Korean adoption community! With kind regards, Daniel Schwekendiek, Ph.D. (Project Coordinator), Ji-Sung Kwon, Ph.D. (Professor of Korea Baptist Theological University) on behalf of Jung Aie-Ree (President of InKAS, Inc.) International Korean Adoptee Service, Inc. (InKAS)
4F, 101-12 Daehyun-Dong, Seodaemoon-Gu
Seoul, The Republic of Korea
Tel.: +82 2-3148-0258 Fax.: +82 2-3148-0259
E-mail: inkas21@yahoo.co.kr
Internet: http://www.InKAS.or.kr (www.inkas.org

Participation criteria:
1. Overseas adopted Korean
2. Age: 16 years or older

http://www.inkas.or.kr/survey/english.asp

Language Study

2008-08-12T17:02:08Z

Childhood exposure to a language facilitates learning the language as an adult.

Learning a foreign language late in life can be rewarding but hard work. One of the challenges is a lack of familiarity with foreign sounds. For example, a Japanese speaker finds it hard to distinguish between 'l' and 'r', which can create confusion with words like 'lice' and 'rice'.

Children, however, have little difficulty learning a second language, and they can quickly master a foreign accent and sound like a native speaker. This raises a question. What happens when a child learns a second language early in life, but then stops using it? Does he or she completely forget this language, or is some of this knowledge preserved? For example, would this child relearn the language more quickly if exposed to it again as an adult?

Professor Jeffrey Bowers and Dr. Sven Mattys in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristol, UK, have been awarded a research grant from the Economic and Social Research Council to find out.

Their research provides evidence that early learning is permanently engraved in our brains, and that it facilitates later relearning. The experimenters taught English speakers sounds from foreign languages that are difficult to perceive by English speakers. For instance, Zulu includes two different sounds that both approximate an English 'b', but sound very different to Zulu speakers (as different as 'l' and 'r' sound to English speakers).

The key participants of Bowers and Mattys' study had spent a few years of their early life in South Africa, where they had learned some Zulu as children. Now in their 20s and 30s, they have no memory of Zulu - for instance, they cannot not translate the word mother into Zulu. Bowers and Mattys found that, at the start of training, these participants performed at chance in distinguishing between the two Zulu 'b', just like a control group of participants who were never exposed to Zulu. Strikingly, however, the participants with the Zulu background started learning the contrast after about 15 training sessions, whereas the control participants continued to treat the two sounds identically. By the end of training, the former were performing at a similar level as native speakers, whereas the control participants never got much beyond chance.

The important implication of this work is that early exposure to a language has a long-lasting impact on a person's ability to learn a language. Even if the language is forgotten (or feels this way) after many years of disuse, leftover traces of the early exposure can manifest themselves as an improved ability to relearn the language. The researchers conclude that it is a good idea to expose children to a foreign language early in life, even if they do not practice until years later.

The study is far from over, however. Bowers and Mattys are looking for participants over 18 years of age who where exposed to Mandarin or Korean as a child, but have not been exposed to the language since then, and have little or no knowledge of Mandarin/Korean now. If you have this background and would like to find out more about the study, please contact Jeffrey Bowers at j.bowers@bristol.ac.uk If you are eligible to participate, the research can be carried out in your own home, anywhere in the UK, US, Canada, and Australia. You will be reimbursed for your time. You can learn more about this study at: http://language.psy.bris.ac.uk/languagestudy/

Korean/English Bilingual Immersion School Development Survey

2007-11-16T22:13:01Z

This survey is developed by a group of Twin Cities (MN) parents who are trying to find more effective ways to help their children develop a more global
perspective as well as a bilingual education in a regular public school setting. Immersion education is a way of learning a second language (after the native language) and has been proven as the most effective way to learn a second or foreign language. Your feedback in this survey will assist in knowing the community's level of interest in starting a Korean/English bilingual immersion school.

http://kismn.org/survey/english