Sarah Shin, Professor of Education and Special Assistant to the Provost for Academic Initiatives
Sarah Shin joined the UMBC faculty in 1999. She has established herself as one of the country’s leading scholars on bilingualism and heritage languages, on TESOL teacher development, and on the acquisition of academic language by
ESL students. Her work has been influential and groundbreaking in both her scholarly endeavors and her teaching.
She has researched and published extensively in the broad interdisciplinary field of bilingualism, and her work covers a wide range of topics including language acquisition of bilingual children, heritage language education, English language teaching, and teacher development. She has three single-authored research monographs, one edited special journal issue, and numerous research articles in diverse and highly respected journals.
Shin’s work on TESOL teacher training and ESL academic language learning has made a very positive contribution to the understanding of language pedagogy and second language acquisition. She has established herself as an important voice in this area of study and has raised the visibility of the challenges associated with the development of literacy and academic language by immigrant populations. Through clear and engaging writing, her seminal publications have helped shape the literature and the thinking in the area of applied linguistics and child bilingualism.
Shin received her B.S. from Cornell University and her Ph.D. from University of Michigan.