Donna Christian is Treasurer of The International Research Foundation on English Language Education (TIRF). She has been a member of TIRF’s Board of Trustees since 2005 and was elected Treasurer in 2011. Dr. Christian received her M.S. in applied linguistics and Ph.D. in sociolinguistics from Georgetown University. She is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC where she served as President from 1994-2010. Her research and publications have focused largely on the role of language in education, including second language learning, dialect diversity, and public policy. Her board service, in addition to TIRF, includes the editorial boards of the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, the Journal of Content-Based and Immersion Education, and the Heritage Language Journal. Dr. Christian was a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in linguistics at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland for two years and has taught in an adjunct capacity at several other universities. She has been honored with several awards, including the 2006 Promoting Bilingualism award from the Association for Two-Way and Dual Language Education, and the 2011 Victoria A. Fromkin Lifetime Service Award from the Linguistic Society of America.
