About me

I am a professor in the English Department at Kent State University, where I teach in the BA and MA programs in TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language). I mainly teach courses on second language reading, second language writing, second/foreign language teaching methods, and second language acquisition.

I am an active member of TESOL International Association. I have served as steering committee member and chair of the Second Language Writing Interest Section (2012-2018) and the Awards Professional Council (2018-2021).

Before coming to Kent State, I was a Post-doctoral Research Associate at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, where I worked with Silvia Pessoa on the CMU-Q Study of Literacy, a 4-year longitudinal study of academic literacy development funded by the Qatar National Research Fund.

I completed my Ph.D. in S econd Language Acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University under the supervision of Keiko Koda. I also hold an MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from Michigan State University and a BA in Linguistics and German from the University of Michigan.

I lived for a number of years in Japan, where I taught EFL in a variety of contexts including public primary and secondary schools, public and private universities, and a nonprofit education organization. I am originally from Spring Lake, Michigan.

In my free time, I enjoy traveling, photography, and snorkeling.