Shannon M. Hilliker received her PhD at the University at Albany in Curriculum and instruction with a focus on language learning. She has been in the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) field since 1999 where she has taught in both ESL (English as a Second Language) and teacher education. Dr. Hilliker is an Assistant Professor of TESOL at Binghamton University. The courses she focused on include English grammar, linguistics, the use of technology in the classroom as well as supervising student teacher internships. She has done research on rural education including the roles of ESL teachers in these districts with low numbers of ELLs, teacher professional development especially with mainstream teachers that have ELLs in their classrooms, elementary ESL after school programs and their impact on social language development, international student success and third language learners operating in the L2 environment and she has looked at the use of feedback in the ESL and Japanese foreign language classrooms. Her largest body of research focuses on online conversation and culture exchange through virtual exchange for both teacher candidates and L2 English language learners. She specifically wants to ensure that authentic practices are incorporated in all of her teacher education classes which she achieves through virtual exchanges.
Both Drs. Lenkaitis and Hilliker teach in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Educational Leadership and have found common ground not only in the language learning aspect of their expertise, but also their backgrounds in using technology in the classroom. They were both awarded SUNY (State University of New York) COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) faculty fellowships early in their careers that led them to not only see the value of virtual exchange as a way to incorporate authentic practice in their teacher education courses, but also the value for fostering intercultural exchange that is needed among the 21st century learners they teach and mentor. This has prompted them to dedicate much of their research efforts to virtual exchange and setting up partnerships with their international colleagues. They collaborate with countries that include Colombia, Mexico, Poland and student populations of diverse cultures and languages at the university and K-12 levels. Individually and together, Drs. Lenkaitis and Hilliker have published and are working on over 25 publications to share their research on virtual exchange, teacher education and L2 learning and teaching. These include book chapters and articles in scholarly peer-reviewed international journals such as Computer Assisted Language Learning and MEXTESOL Journal. They have also presented at local, state, national, and international conferences such as American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) and UNICollaboration’s EVALUATE 2019.