She received her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her work focuses on second and foreign language teaching and learning, language testing, program evaluation, and research methods. Prior to NYU, she worked as a research analyst for the Los Angeles Unified School District where she directed a large scale evaluation of a computer-based literacy program. She also served as a research analyst at the Center for the Study of Evaluation/CRESST at UCLA where she worked on the development of performance assessments in English and Spanish. The work she will present for the Language and Linguistics Speaker Series was funded by a Spencer Dissertation Grant and a UC Linguistic Minority Research Institute Grant and was awarded the AERA Division H Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2006. Fall Semester 2007 Series