Dr. Rosalie Porter (Chairwoman) is an accomplished author and scholar and current chairwoman of the board for ProEnglish. She is a consultant for school districts across the country, the executive director of the READ Institute (The Institute for Research in English Acquisition and Development), and founder and editor-in-chief of READ Perspectives.

Dr. Porter, who arrived in the U.S. at age six, not knowing a word of English, has also been a fellow at Harvard University, a Spanish Bilingual Teacher, the Director of Bilingual/ESL Programs in the Newton, MA Public Schools, and Chairman of the Massachusetts Commission on Bilingual Education.

She has delivered public lectures for the U.S. State Department in Bulgaria, China, Finland, Japan, Israel, Italy and Turkey; and has been keynote speaker at Georgetown, Harvard, Brandeis and Northeastern Universities, and at Wellesley and Mt. Holyoke Colleges. Porter has served as an expert witness in court cases relating to the education of non-English-speaking students in California, New Mexico, New York, and Texas.

• Chairman, Massachusetts Commission on Bilingual
• EducationExecutive Director, The Institute for Research in English Acquisition and Development (READ Institute)
• Founder and editor-in-chief, READ Perspectives
• Member, National Advisory Council on Bilingual Education

Author, Forked Tongue: The politics of bilingual education

Author, American Immigrant: My Life In Three Languages

Author, Language and Literacy for English Learners

 

Dr. Cliff Colwell is an orthopedic surgeon whose research interests include diagnosis and prevention of venous thromboembolic disease following total joint replacement.

He completed his internship and one year of surgical residency at the University of Michigan, orthopaedic residency at the Hospital for Special Surgery, New York, and a trauma fellowship at Los Angeles County Hospital. He served in the Air Force at Carswell Air Force Base, Fort Worth, Texas. He has received both The Knee Society Award and the Nicholas Andry Award for his work in this field. Among his varied interests are new materials and kinematic behavior of TJR, new modalities for pain management following TJR and the development of chip technology for joint implantation.

He has published over 150 peer reviewed articles and book chapters, and has delivered more than 200 professional presentations to the science and academic communities.

• President, the Knee Society/American Association of Hip & Knee Surgeons;
• Director, Shiley Center for Orthopaedic Research & Education, Scripps Clinic;
• Clinical Professor in the Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), School of Medicine;
• Founder, Division of Orthopaedic Surgery, Scripps Center in LaJolla, CA;
• Frequent contributor and editor, The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery and Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research;
• Team Physician, San Diego Padres Baseball Club and America3 Women’s yacht team.

 

K.C. McAlpin grew up in Houston, Texas. He is a C.P.A. with an international business degree from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master’s degree in international management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Arizona. For several years he worked for an oil company in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Later he worked as a financial analyst for a Fortune 500 company and then as international controller for a high-tech company, before turning to public interest work in 1995.

K.C.’s experience working overseas speaking foreign languages made him appreciate the critical role that language fills in promoting empathy and understanding between people. He also became aware of the conflicts that inevitably arise when people are unable to speak a common language. His concern about the erosion of English as the common language in the United States led him to join and become active in ProEnglish, a national non-profit organization dedicated to preserving English as our common language and to making it the official language of the United States. He was named the organization’s Executive Director in 2000. In July 2010, he moved to Petoskey, Michigan to become the President of U.S. Inc, ProEnglish’s parent organization.

K.C. has appeared frequently as a guest on radio and television programs including ABC’s “Good Morning America;” Fox Morning News; CNN News; CSPAN; National Public Radio; CNBC; CNN’s “Both Sides” with host Jesse Jackson; “The Lou Dobbs Show;” MSNBC’s “Connected Coast to Coast;” and numerous other media programs.

Dale M. Herder, Ph.D. Dale Herder has lectured and consulted in the United Arab Emirates, the Republic of Georgia, Germany, England, Italy, New Zealand, Taiwan, Japan, and Canada. He served as an enlisted man and commissioned officer at sea in the U.S. Navy and retired with the rank of Commander. He is a former Fulbright Fellow in West Germany and received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history, and a Ph.D. in English/American studies at Michigan State University. His articles, essays, and book chapters appear in a variety of academic and popular publications, and his book, Common Sense Rediscovered: Lessons From the Terrorist Attack on America, was published in 2004. After over forty years as a high school principal, English professor, department chair, dean, academic vice president, and interim college president, he is retired and resides in Northern Michigan.

 

Phil Kent is a media/communications consultant, author, columnist, publisher and media commentator who has appeared on Fox News Network, CNN, MSNBC, and syndicated talk radio programs across the nation. He is a regular panelist on the Sunday public affairs program “The Georgia Gang” that airs on Fox5Atlanta WAGA-TV.

Kent, a native of Auburn, New York, graduated in 1973 from the Henry W. Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia and is a retired U.S. Army first lieutenant, military police.

A longtime editorial page editor of the Augusta, Ga., Chronicle, he later became president of the Atlanta-based Southeastern Legal Foundation from 2001-2003 and currently is president of the Atlanta-based Phil Kent Consulting Inc. He also is the CEO/Publisher of InsiderAdvantage Georgia, James magazine and The Southern Political Report.

In 2011 Gov. Nathan Deal of Georgia appointed Kent as a member of the state Immigration Enforcement Review Board, a position he still retains.

 

Dr. Asgar Asgarov is a native of Azerbaijan.  He was among the first group of exchange students from the former Soviet Union to arrive in the United States in 1993.  He has earned a B.A with Magna cum Laude in Political Science from St. Olaf College, and has obtained Master of Arts in Russian and East European Studies at Stanford University.

Dr. Asgarov holds a PhD in History.  He specializes in 20th century Russia and Eurasia.  Dr. Asgarov has authored a book, Reporting from the Frontlines of the First Cold War: American Diplomatic Despatches About the Internal Conditions in the Soviet Union. Dr. Asgarov has taught numerous university-level courses in Russian, Middle Eastern and European histories.

In addition to Azeri and English, Dr. Asgarov is proficient in Russian, Turkish, French and Japanese.  He is currently employed as an international broadcaster.

 

ProEnglish Emeritus Board Members:

 

John H. Tanton, M.D. is the founding chairman of ProEnglish and a retired eye surgeon from Petoskey, Michigan.  He is a graduate of Michigan State University and University of Michigan Medical School.

Dr. Tanton has long championed environmental issues, having cofounded a conservancy, and served as national chair of the population committee of the Sierra Club.

In 1983, together with the late U.S. Senator S. I. Hayakawa, he founded U.S. ENGLISH to oppose the drift towards multilingualism in the United States.  In 1994, he joined three other former U.S. ENGLISH board members to found ProEnglish, which was established to defend Arizona’s official English law before the United States Supreme Court.

Dr. Tanton is a book author and the publisher of The Social Contract, a quarterly journal of public policy.  He was a 1990 recipient of the Chevron Conservation Award.

 

 

 

Gerda Bikales is a naturalized American, a Holocaust survivor, and founding director of ProEnglish. She is the author of Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, an autobiographical account of her and her mother’s harrowing flight across Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. Her interest in protecting English as our unifying national language arose from her personal experience learning English as a sixteen year old immigrant to the United States.

A graduate of Upsala College and Rutgers University, Mrs. Bikales holds a Masters degree in Social Welfare. She has served as program officer in a number of public interest organizations in the fields of environment and population, and has written extensively on immigration, assimilation, and language policy. She was a founding board member and first Executive Director of US English, the official English advocacy organization founded by John Tanton and the late U.S. Senator S.I. Hayakawa.

In addition her service on ProEnglish’s Board of Directors, Mrs. Bikales served as the founding chair of the organization’s National Board of Advisors. She retired from both positions in 2006, becoming ProEnglish’s first Director Emeritus, but remaining a member of its national Board of Advisors.

 

Leo Sorensen is a founding director of ProEnglish and has been a national leader in English language activities since 1982.  He helped pass Proposition O in San Francisco in 1983 and Proposition 39 in California in 1984, both mandating ballots in English only, and Proposition 63, which in 1986 made English the official language of the state of California by constitutional amendment.

Mr. Sorensen, a nationalized citizen from Denmark, is also active in efforts to curtail illegal immigration.  He is cofounder of  E Pluribus Unum, a national organization dealing with national unity, and has been involved in civic affairs in Oakland, California, serving on a number of boards and commissions.

Mr. Sorensen, a businessman, received his formal education in Denmark, with a degree in accounting.

 

Bob Park is a founding director of ProEnglish.  He has been involved in citizenship, language and immigration issues for 48 years, including a 30-year career with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.  In 1988, he founded Arizonans for Official English (AOE), and led its successful statewide initiative to make English Arizona’s official language.  When the state refused to appeal a federal court decision that overturned the law, Mr. Park appealed the decision all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.  In 1997, the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, establishing that states could create their own official English laws.

Bob’s commitment to preserving English as our common language, and making it our official language, stems from his first-hand experience dealing with language issues during his long career with the immigration service.  He is a coast guard veteran, a member of the American Legion, the National Rifle Association, and a past board member of United We Stand America — Arizona.  He and his wife Lois have lived in Prescott, Arizona for 20 years.