She received her PhD in Comparative Literature (Chinese and German) from Washington University in St. Louis. Her research centers on gender and media studies in China. Her Chinese language teaching focuses on a holistic approach to developing the high-level language learner. She integrates communicative language tasks with multiple literacies (media, health and nutrition, financial, technological, civic) in order to help students develop both interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, and to become life-long language learners and to value cross-cultural understanding.