I am a Teaching Specialist in the Minnesota English Language Program (MELP) at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and Assistant Director of our Summer Intensive English Program. In my faculty role at MELP, I teach English as a second language and help multilingual students develop cultural understanding and the communication, critical thinking, and academic skills needed to be successful in academic, professional, and social settings. In this same role, I also serve as a resource to university programs, governance committees, and faculty/staff who work with multilingual students, and I advocate for equitable policies and practices that support our students and foster greater understanding of linguistic and cultural diversity in our university community and beyond. Outside of MELP, I have taught lower-division French language courses (Dept. of French & Italian) and introductory courses to language teaching, English grammar, and linguistics for undergraduate and graduate-level programs (Dept. of Curriculum & Instruction). I have also taught graduate courses in second language acquisition and sociolinguistics in the MA TESOL program at Hamline University. 

Over the last decade, my scholarship has focused on second language acquisition and use and on the resulting implications for teaching and learning in multilingual and multicultural classrooms. Co-authored/co-edited books include: Intercultural Skills in Action (2021, University of Michigan Press); New Perspectives on Material Mediation in Language Learner Pedagogy (2022, Springer); Voice and Mirroring In L2 Pronunciation Instruction (2023, Equinox Publishing Ltd); and Heteroglossia and Language Play in Multilingual Speech (2024, De Gruyter Mouton). In 2023, I was awarded the TESOL Award for Excellence in Research (with Elaine Tarone) for a paper on the research and teaching of second language pronunciation.

Currently, I serve as the Technical Editor for MinneTESOL Journal. I am a Past-President of MinneTESOL (2020 President) and co-chair of the 2017 and 2018 Minnesota English Learner Education (MELEd) Conferences.