Immigrant Culture

Yan Xia’s research areas include immigrant youth behavioral and mental health, parent-adolescent communication and relationship, strengths and stress among Asian immigrant families, adolescent substance abuse, program evaluation, and Chinese adolescent social competence. She previously served on the Asian Community and Culture Center Board, where she aimed to promote culturally sensitive service delivery and engagement in public speech to reduce the barriers of seeking mental and behavioral services among Asian and Asian American populations. Xia is also a member of the Board of Directors for National Council of Family Relations (NCFR) and a member of Expert Working Group in Department of Economic and Social Affairs Family Focus for United Nations (UNDESA). She also has been granted a fellow status on the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Updated 7/14/25

A professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education, Theresa Catalano studies education for language teachers and the interaction between global migration, language and education. Her 2016 book, “Talking about Global Migration: Implications for Language Teaching,” focused on the stories of migrants around the world and the metaphors they use when they talk about their experiences. She is co-author of a 2020 volume (with Linda Waugh) that lays out key concepts behind critical discourse studies, a problem-oriented research discipline that critically examines the relationship between language and visual communication, ideology, power and social inequality. Catalano is an active member of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s M3 Initiative, housed in the Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education Department, and dedicated to scholarship on (im)migrant, multilingual and multicultural education. She teaches classes about language pedagogy, intercultural communication, and multilingual learners. She is an expert in second/additional language acquisition and teaching, as well as critical discourse analysis, linguistics and world/dual language education. (Updated May 2025.)