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NEWS RELEASE

10-07-03

Contacts:
Carol Alexander Phillips, ISU Child Development Lab School,
(515) 294-7478
Sue Ellen Tuttle, College of Family and Consumer Sciences, (515) 294-8799
Kevin Brown, News Service, (515) 294-8986

HANSEN EARLY CHILDHOOD LECTURE TO BE OCT. 21 AT ISU

AMES, Iowa -- A nationally recognized expert on early childhood intercultural perspectives has been named the 2003-04 Barbara E. (Mound) Hansen Early Childhood Lecture Series Endowment speaker for Iowa State University's College of Family and Consumer Sciences.

Janet Gonzalez-Mena will be on campus Oct. 20-22. She will speak on "Rearranging the Mosaic: From Cultural Differences To Common Sense," at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 21, in the Reiman Gardens Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public. Her lecture will focus on how to value and accept cultural differences in early childcare settings.

Gonzalez-Mena is currently a consultant and member of the WestEd Program for Infant Toddler Caregivers. WestEd is a San Francisco-based nonprofit education research and development agency that serves California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah.

She has also worked as a preschool teacher, childcare director, Head Start trainer and coordinator of a program focusing on the care of abused and neglected children. She has authored several books and articles on early childhood education.

While at Iowa State, Gonzalez-Mena will tour the ISU Child Development Laboratory School, meet with human development and family studies students both in the classroom and informally, and interact with lab school faculty and staff.

"The Hansen Lecture Series is used to address cutting-edge topics in early childhood education," said Carol Alexander Phillips, program coordinator for the human development and family studies program at Iowa State and director of the Lab School. "The Lab School opened a program for 2-year-old toddlers last year, and her expertise in this area makes her a natural fit for the diverse student body in the Lab School, in our college and at Iowa State."

Established in 2001, the Hansen Early Childhood Education Lecture Series Endowment is made possible by a gift from Richard and Barbara (Mound) Hansen. The Hansens created the series to bring contemporary, issue-oriented topics on early childhood education to the College of Family and Consumer Sciences.

For more information, contact Phillips at (515) 294-7478.

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