Kiel Christianson

Professor Kiel Christianson (Ph.D. 2004, Linguistics & Cognitive Science, Michigan State University) is Chair of the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois, with additional affiliations in the Departments of Linguistics and Psychology. He also directs the Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education (SLATE) Doctoral Concentration Program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and co-directs the Illinois Language and Literacy Initiative at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. His research in psycholinguistics, reading, and bilingualism has received funding from the National Science Foundation, Sandia National Labs, the Confucius Institute and private industry.

Xun Yan

Xun Yan is an associate professor of Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education, and Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a faculty member in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. At UIUC, Xun is the director of the undergraduate program in Linguistics + TESOL and the supervisor of the English Placement Test and the English Proficiency Interview. Xun's research interests include speaking and writing assessment, psycholinguistic approaches to language testing, and language assessment literacy. His work has been published in journals including Language Testing, TESOL Quarterly, Assessing Writing, System, Journal of Second Language Writing, and Frontiers in Psychology.

Joyce Tolliver

Joyce Tolliver is an associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, with affiliate appointments in the Center for Global Studies,  the European Union Center, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies. She is Director of the Program in Translation and Interpreting Studies, where she also holds an affiliate appointment. Her research focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spanish and Philippine literatures and cultures, with a special emphasis on translation, gender, and sexuality studies.

Hedda Meadan

Hedda Meadan is a professor at the Department of Special Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Meadan's areas of interest include social-communication skills and challenging behavior of young children with autism and other developmental disabilities and intervention methods to enhance these spheres of functioning. Dr. Meadan and her team use a cascading intervention model in which they train and coach, via telepractice, natural change agents (e.g., family members, service providers, behavior analysts) to use evidence-based strategies to promote social-communication skills of children in the natural environment.

Reynaldo Pagura

Reynaldo Pagura has an M.A. in Applied Linguistic/Language Acquisition from Brigham Young University in Provo, UT, and a Ph.D. in the Translation Studies track of the English Language Linguistics and Literatures from the University of Sao Paulo, in Brazil. He has worked as a conference interpreter since 1990, became a Certified Translator (English>Portuguese) by the American Translators Association (ATA) in 1991, of which he is an active member. He has also worked as a Court Interpreter in Brazil and in the State of Utah and has been an interpreter trainer since 1998. He has been teaching the interpreting courses in the Graduate Program in Translation and Interpreting Studies of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 2018. He has published on interpreter training in Brazil, United States, Argentina, Ireland, Great Britain, Germany, and Spain.

Dylan Burton

Dylan Burton is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Educational Psychology and Linguistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He holds a PhD in Second Language Studies from Michigan State University and an MA in Language Testing from Lancaster University. Dylan's research interests include second language speech perception and assessment, rater cognition, and nonverbal behavior and affect. His research has been published in Language Testing, Language Assessment Quarterly, Papers in Language Testing and Assessment, and System.

Sara Saez-Fajardo

Sara Saez Fajardo is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Educational Psychology and Linguistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of Illinois and an MA in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language from the University of Salamanca. Her research is focused on language teaching and assessment for heritage speakers and second language learners, with a focus on what practices prove most equitable for both groups of learners. Sara's work has been presented at venues like the Language Assessment Research Conference, and the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, and has been published in the International Journal of Multilingualism.

Sophie Ben Menni Schuler

Sophie Ben Menni Schuler (M.A. Conference Interpreting, Universitat Heidelberg; B.A. Translation and Interpreting Studies, Universidad de Granada) is an instructor in the Program in Translation and Interpreting Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has worked as a translator and an interpreter in both community and conference interpreting. She has been a language teacher (Spanish, German, English) since 2013. She has been teaching at UIUC since 2022, the year she was awarded a full-year scholarship from DAAD, the German Academic Exchange Service, to teach in the Department for Germanic Languages and Literatures.

Natalie Grewe

Natalie Grewe is the Project Coordinator for the TQII program. Natalie has been with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign since 2019. She holds a bachelor's degree in Anthropology from Illinois State University and an MBA with a focus in healthcare and research from St. Francis University.