EUGENE, ORE. – Avant Assessment co-founder and CEO David Bong received the 2019 Global Citizen Award, which honors innovators in language education. Bong was recognized for his leadership in founding and sponsoring the Global Seal of Biliteracy, a credential that recognizes anyone for their language skills, regardless of how they learned them.
“I am honored to receive this distinguished award,” said Bong. “Our team is always looking for ways to improve language learning by creating innovative solutions for difficult challenges.”
The inaugural Global Citizen Award, presented by The Happy World Foundation Inc., honors global citizenship education, citizen-to-citizen diplomacy, and cross-cultural understanding in schools and communities in the United States and abroad. The foundation works towards a peaceful world free of prejudice and bigotry by bringing global citizens into the classroom.
“David is a visionary,” said Happy World Foundation committee member and Global Seal of Biliteracy executive director Linda Egnatz. “When he sees a need that will greatly impact lives, he steps up. David has helped develop language tests that enable immigrant and refugee students to receive competency-based credits and make the dream of a high school diploma a reality.”
Bong graduated from Wesleyan University with a B.A. in the College of Social Studies and Japanese History. He has developed several innovative technologies, including Earl, an iPhone app that enabled people who had lost their sight to read digital newspapers through speech recognition and text-to-speech technologies. Bong is on the board of the Joint National Committee for Languages and serves as a member of the U.S. delegation to the International Standards Organization committee that establishes international standards for education and learning systems.
About Avant Assessment: Co-founded in 2001 by David and Sheila Bong and Dr. Carl Falsgraf, Avant builds and delivers STAMP, the world’s first online four-skill language proficiency assessment. Avant assesses real-world proficiency by pairing innovative computer adaptive technologies with human scoring. Avant’s assessments all align with the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Proficiency Scale. Each assessment is designed to inspire learners to grow and teachers to be more effective. For more information go to avantassessment.com.
