Kristine Billmyer, Ph.D.

Kristine Billmyer serves as Executive Director of the College of General Studies and Associate Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences.

Prior to this position, she served in many different positions on the staff of the ELP. In 1990 Dr. Billmyer became Director of the ELP and then Executive Director in 2003. She is also an adjunct associate professor at the Graduate School of Education.

During her years at the ELP, Dr. Billmyer taught and designed a number of ESL courses in the Intensive Program, organized the first group of Evening Program courses, designed and coordinated the English Language and Cultural Perspectives Program for the Lauder Institute, and led a major reform of the Intensive Program curriculum. Dr. Billmyer designed and coordinated the training program for newly appointed foreign language lecturers and teaching assistants at Penn.

Her research interests are cross-cultural variation in language use and the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence by second language learners. She has conducted research on the analysis of spoken discourse in business and medical settings, which motivated the development of several ESP courses and programs, including the Summer Institute for International Business Students, and Communication Skills for Foreign Medical Professionals. Dr. Billmyer was awarded two USIA academic specialist grants to train EFL teachers in the Baltic Countries (1993) and in Poland (1994). She frequently presents papers at TESOL International and local conferences, and has also presented at conferences organized by the American Association for Applied Linguistics and by the American College of Physicians. She has published in the Journal of English for Specific Purposes and Applied Linguistics.

Dr. Billmyer has been active in the leadership of professional associations, serving on the executive board of the American Association of Intensive English Programs as secretary (2000-2003) and president (2004-2005), as president of the Philadelphia Region Intensive English Program consortium (2003), and as vice president of the local TESOL affiliate. Her undergraduate degree from Vassar College is in Spanish literature, and she earned her Ph.D. from Penn in educational linguistics.