Board Election 2022

Dear CLASS members,

It’s that time of the year again, voting for our new board members for CLASS!  The CLASS Election Committee 2022 has prepared a slate of CLASS board candidates for you to vote on.  Each CLASS member who renewed their CLASS membership or joined prior to April 1, 2022 will be eligible to vote. Each eligible member can cast up to two candidates. The voting window will be open on Friday, September 30 and will be closed on Sunday, October 9, 2022, at midnight Eastern Time.  

Thank you!

THE Election Committee

Brenda Hsu, CLASS Election Committee Chair        
Baocai Jia, CLASS Executive Director
Ying Jin, CLASS President            
Na Li, CLASS Vice President
Lan Lin, CLASS Second Vice President        
Yan Wang, CLASS Board member
Jie Bai, CLASS member

The following candidates were nominated by the CLASS Board

Ran An 安然 (Arizona)
Ran An has a master’s degree in Chinese Language and Literature from Central China Normal University. Mr. An taught 100 level to 400 level Chinese language and Chinese civilization courses to undergraduate students at Mississippi College for eight years. In 2008, he became an AP Chinese test reader. In 2010, he was funded by the STARTALK program to get language assessment training at the Center of Applied Linguistics in Washington, D.C. In 2014, Ran An was elected as the board member of the Mississippi Foreign Language Association. In 2015, Mr. An relocated to Arizona, and worked as a Chinese AP teacher and taught classes from Mandarin 1 to Chinese AP at BASIS Chandler, which is ranked as the top 1 charter school by the
U.S. News & World Report. Mr. An also designed and taught Capstone Chinese in BASIS Chandler. During his work at BASIS Chandler, Mr. An devoted himself to helping more and more non-heritage speakers to pass the AP Chinese test. In 2020, Mr. An started to teach Chinese AP at Hamilton High School, the top one and largest comprehensive high school in Arizona, and he also worked as the Mandarin assessment and teaching sequence cadre for Chandler Unified School District (CUSD). Mr. An is currently the writer of the standard Mandarin tests and teaching sequences and anticipations for all the high school Mandarin programs in different high schools across the entire school district.

Outside of his job at CUSD, Mr. An also serves as the current principal and board member of the Contemporary Chinese School of Arizona (CCSA), the largest heritage Chinese school in Arizona, with a history of 26 years. In the last five years, Mr. An tried to foster collaboration among all different Chinese programs in the Phoenix area and initiated the Chinese Language and Culture Experience Day of Arizona (AzCLCED). Mr. An worked on the organizing committee of AzCLCED and played an important role in bringing this event to the community. This program is jointly hosted by the CCSA, ASU, Phoenix Sister Cities, and the Chandler Unified School District. It is the first time that all different types of Chinese programs have met together to discuss how to promote Chinese language in our community and in the history of Arizona. Ran An has been playing violin for 30 years, and he is currently the first violinist of the Chinese Art Ensemble of the Greater Phoenix Area.

Hai Zheng Olefsky 郑海 (Texas)
Hai Zheng Olefsky has been introducing students to the Chinese language and culture for over 20 years. Since 1999, she has been the Chair of Chinese Studies and Associate Director of the International Program at St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Austin, TX. Since 2010, she has been awarded three times the endowed Master Teaching Chair for Critical Languages at SSES. She also serves as the founding advisor of the National Chinese Honor Society-St. Stephen’s School Li Long-Powerful Dragon Chapter. In 2018, she received The CLASS  30th Anniversary Service Award at ACTFL Conference. In 2019,  she was the inaugural recipient of the distinguished Star award by the 18th Greater Houston Chinese Speech Competition committee for her unparalleled contribution to the Chinese learning community. She has established an outreach partnership program with Asian American Culture Center in Austin. She is the founding sponsor of her school’s Chinese Language and Culture Club. Her students have been winners of 汉语桥, the Greater Houston area, and the US National (Boston) Chinese Speech Contests winners.  She was selected by Mr. Ted Yao, author of Integrated Chinese, and presented a paper titled "Steps of Teaching ‘Integrated Chinese’” at the Chinese Instructional Material Conference in Hawaii. She was invited to give a presentation by the CLTA-Texas at the Texas State Capitol in Austin on promoting K-12 Chinese Language Education in the Greater Austin area. She was also chosen by the TFLA (Texas Foreign Language Association) board to give a presentation, "How to build a successful Chinese Program in High School”, at the TFLA Conference in Houston, Texas. Ms. Olefsky was among the first Chinese teachers trained at the pioneering Summer Institute for Teaching Chinese as a Second Language at the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education in Philadelphia. Her mentors have included: Ms. Chih-Wen Su,  Dr. Shu-Han Wang, and Ms. Wei-Ling Wu. She is looking forward to working for the board to ensure that all students have access to the quality Chinese language instruction they need to thrive in the 21st century.