Zhongkui Ju, a Ph.D. candidate in second language education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction won three competitive awards in support of his dissertation research project—Elementary Mandarin Immersion Students Learning Alphabetic Pinyin and Using Pinyin to Learn Chinese Characters. He received the 2019 Dissertation Grant Award for the Journal of Language Learning, the Research Support Grant from the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations/National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages, and 2018 Research Priority Initiatives award from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

Zhongkui is advised by Professor Martha Bigelow in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. He was also supported in his research by Tara Fortune in the Mandarin Immersion projects at the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition, and received support from Elaine Tarone, professor emerita in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.