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Elenita Irizarry Ramos, a lecturer with the Western Massachusetts Bilingual Hub in the College of Education and senior strategist for multilingual learning and dual language education at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, participated as a panelist in the Spring 2025 UMass Lowell School of Education Symposium on Bilingual Education on April 2.

The symposium, held on the UMass Lowell campus, brought together educators, researchers and community members to discuss legal, historical and policy implications for multilingual learners. 

Irizarry Ramos, a respected voice in bilingual and multilingual education in both Massachusetts and Puerto Rico, contributed to a panel discussion reflecting on the ongoing impact of Lau and the 2017 LOOK Act on language rights and bilingual program access in the commonwealth.

The symposium centered on the legacy of U.S. Supreme Court 1974 decision Lau v. Nichols, which established bilingual education in the United States featured a keynote presentation by scholar Trish Morita-Mullaney, author of “Lau v. Nichols and Chinese American Language Rights: The Sunrise and Sunset of Bilingual Education.”