Kristin Lems

Kristin Lems, EdD, is a professor in the ESL/Bilingual Education program at National Louis University in Chicago, where she teaches courses in English as a second language, bilingual education, cross-cultural education, and related topics. She holds an A.B. from the University of Michigan, master’s degrees in West Asian Studies and Teaching English as a Second Language from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and a Doctorate of Education in Reading and Language from National Louis University. Lems is a two-time Fulbright Scholar, having received awards to Algeria and Mongolia, and she has directed multiple long-term grants from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition.

In addition to her teaching and research, Lems is first author of the textbook Building Literacy with Multilingual Learners: Insights from Linguistics, now in its third edition, coauthored with Tenena M. Soro and Gareth Charles and published by Guilford Press, which focuses on literacy development for PreK–12 English language learners. She has also served as a column editor for the Illinois Reading Council Journal and has coauthored or coedited several other works in the field of reading and language education.