KMAX: News of the West

Russell Campbell, champion of innovative language programs, dies

LOS ANGELES (AP) UCLA professor Russell Campbell, who spearheaded English language training programs throughout China and championed language immersion programs at home, has died. He was 75.

Campbell died March 30 of colon cancer at his home in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles times reported.

Campbell brought English language instruction to countries such as Egypt and China, teaching hundreds of educators, scientists, scholars and business leaders during the 1970s and 1980s.

In the United States, he championed the concept of teaching elementary school students Spanish by having them take all their classes in the language.

In 1971 he persuaded the Culver City Unified School District near Los Angeles to offer one of the first full Spanish language immersion programs in the country. The nationally distinguished program, now in its 32nd year, inspired scores of schools around the country to embrace the immersion approach.

Culver City's program ``was a real pioneering effort,'' said Andrew D. Cohen, a University of Minnesota professor who directs a national consortium of language resource centers. ``Russ was very concerned about promoting English abroad. But he also was a promoter of programs that would get Americans comfortably fluent in other languages.''

Campbell was born in Iowa and grew up in Kansas City, Mo. After graduating from Kansas State Teachers College, he developed English training programs for the United States Information Agency in Argentina and Columbia.

Campbell joined the UCLA faculty in 1964 and became the first chairman of the Teaching English as a Second Language Department, introducing courses in Hindi, Thai, Tagalog and Vietnamese.

He was instrumental in the creation in 1990 of one of the first two-way Korean and English immersion program in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The program teaches Korean and English to a mix of students, including many who grew up hearing Korean but could not read or write it and others whose home languages were English, Spanish or Tagalog.

Campbell is survived by his wife Marjorie, son Roger, daughter Paula Wainright and two grandchildren.

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