Samuel Aguirre is the Senior Director of the Consortium and State Relations Department at WIDA. His team engages and supports WIDA Consortium member states to ensure successful implementation of all WIDA products and services. The Consortium and States Relations team also engages and facilitates state expertise within WIDA to deliver high quality products and services for multilingual learners and their educators. Sam’s life experiences as an immigrant and language learner in the U.S., work as a classroom educator, advocate working with culturally and linguistically diverse communities, and director of multilingual student services at a state education agency provide a strong foundation for his role at WIDA. Sam joined WIDA in fall of 2019 as director of WIDA Español and transitioned to his current role in August 2024.

Sam holds a bachelor’s degree in Bilingual Bicultural Elementary Education from Northeastern Illinois University and a masters in Second Language Studies with a concentration in Engaged Language Policy and Practice from the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. Sam is currently completing a doctoral degree in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in Bilingual Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

E-mail: saaguirre@wisc.edu

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