Harold G. Begay, Ph.D.
Tachini-Naalani Nishli; Todich’iini Bashischiin; Lok’ai Dine’i Dashichei; Tsi’naajini Dashinali.
Dr. Begay was raised on the Navajo Nation (AZ, USA) amidst pervasive poverty, welfare, and deep cultural chasm between his traditional Dine’ (Navajo) culture upbringing and mainstream society Western Greco-Roman education. Upon graduation from Tuba City High School on the Navajo reservation, Mr. Begay gained Honors-At-Admission to Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. He subsequently dropped out of college and completed a tour of duty in Vietnam with the USMC in 1968. He then returned to higher education and in three years graduated with a B.A. in psychology, completed an M.A. in guidance and counseling and secondary education the following year, and completed his Ph.D. in school finance and educational administration from the University of Arizona where he taught and helped direct a Teacher Education Program for four years. Dr. Begay returned to the Navajo reservation and worked in several school districts in different teaching and administrative capacities over a span of twenty-five years.
He was appointed as a Visiting Scholar to UC Berkeley, Graduate School of Education, refining his research in education reform, brain imaging, and continues his applied research in neural plasticity and gifted education with Education Programs for Gifted Youth from Stanford University with his school district. With the College Board, he infused the EQUITY 2000 Saturday Academies and Summer Scholars in several reservation schools in the state (AZ) and Northern Arizona University, now in its eighth year. He continues this critical infusion of exceptional educational resources into historically underserved school districts with the International Baccalaureate Organization (IB World Schools), helping to close the great educational divide, and giving underprivileged school children and students exclusive opportunities for globally enriched challenging education, a K-12 education program recognized by the world’s leading universities.
Dr. Begay shares his research work in low resource schools spanning twenty-five years and offers compelling evidence that school children and students in disadvantaged schools need not repeat chronic widespread school underachievement but that adults have much to do with sustaining this deleterious education profile. Within the past several years, Dr. Begay has been invited to Beijing Institute of Education (China), Oxford University-Harris Manchester College (England), Ecuador Indigenous Immersion Schools (South America), New Zealand Maori Schools, Hawaii Immersion Schools, Washington State’s annual Gifted Leadership Symposium, among other invitations for speaking engagements and seminars. In each instance he has politely declined these prestigious invitations maintaining that these entities would be well served if they would come to his homeland within the Four Sacred Mountains, Sisnaajini, Tsoodzil, Dook’o’osliid, and Dibe Nitsa.
Dr. Begay has presented at various conferences and received awards from the Arizona State Department of Education, the Arizona Association for Gifted Education, and has declined several national awards for educational leadership. Dr. Begay was one of the 2003 Arizona Department of Education’s Honoree, as “Stars of Arizona Education”, receiving a Certificate of Distinction award during the November 2003 MegaConference Honors Banquet. According to the Honorable Mr. Tom Horne, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Arizona Department of Education, “The contributions made by this honoree to learning in our state are lasting, valuable and merit our appreciation and honor.” “With this one word – honor – we recognize and show appreciation of the hard work, drive and commitment that resulted in their many accomplishments. We honor them… we hold them in high esteem. Along with their awards of distinction, they have earned our deepest respect.”
Dr. Begay was also the recipient of the “2003 Gifted Education Administrator of the Year” award, an honor bestowed upon Arizona educators annually by the Arizona Association for Gifted and Talented Education. This awards program is designed to provide recognition to exemplary educators, administrators and advocates for gifted education and students. Dr. Begay continues his work with historically underserved schools in neuroscience and school reform having begun as a post doctoral Visiting Scholar to the Graduate School of Education, Berkeley. He has contributed a chapter to two major books on his work in neural plasticity, enriched classroom instruction, traditional Dine’ (Navajo) giftedness, and neurolinguistic aspects of bilingualism and giftedness. He shares his work with fifteen other international scholars and research scientists in the book, “Conceptions of Giftedness: Sociocultural Perspectives”, (2007) Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and in, “A Handbook for Teachers of Navajo Children,” Arizona State University (2006), an article titled, “’Rewiring’ Brain Functioning for Academic Talent Development: Applying Non-Invasive Neural Research to Classroom Practice as a Means to Develop Student Capacity to Learn.”. His opening address on indigenous language issues and revival was reprinted with permission in the International Foreign Language Honor Society journal, The Forum of Phi Sigma Iota, Fall 2003, Year 25, No. 2. The International Foreign Language Honor Society, Phi Sigma Iota recognizes outstanding ability and high standards of students and faculty of foreign languages, literatures and cultures (including classics, linguistics, philology, comparative literature, ESL, bilingual education, and second language acquisition). It is the highest academic honor in the field of foreign languages. Phi Sigma Iota has initiated over 60,000 members since its foundation in 1917, and it has created and supports numerous scholarship programs. Along the scholarship development program, he has established a non-profit scholarship foundation on behalf of his late father-in-law, The Forrest R. Touchin and Bess Marie Tauchin Scholarship Fund, to honor their contribution to opening up their home for the first field office for Dine’ College in Tuba City, AZ in 1976. Thousands of students have since benefited from attending a local college. Information and contributions to this scholarship fund can be made by contacting Dr. Begay via this home page.
