Dr. Amanda Lanier

About this Site

This site includes my professional portfolio as well as sets of resources on language teaching, teaching language teachers, online instruction, program leadership, and my own forays into teacher inquiry as well as work I have done with my students as a mentor and collaborator.  I am an applied linguist by training, which means that I focus on language learning and use as well as foreign language pedagogy and teacher development. Thanks to my experience designing and teaching over 75 sections of online courses and seven years directing an online graduate program, I have also developed skills in instructional design, marketing and recruitment, student and faculty support, and digital media. If you are working in language education or online learning, explore the sections of this site to find inspiration and guidance. Let me know what you find and what else you’d like to see!

Academic Position

At Michigan State University, I have been a professor in the Master of Arts in Foreign Language Teaching since 2013 and served as Program Director from 2018 to 2025. I am also core faculty in the Second Language Studies program, in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures. Because the Master of Arts in Foreign Language Teaching and the Graduate Certificate are both fully online, I have spent my career so far working with language teachers and programs across the U.S. and around the world, representing 20 different languages. As a MAFLT instructor, I serve as a subject matter expert, instructional designer, and facilitator of all courses that I teach, and I regularly update the courses based on student performance and feedback as well as updates in the field, such as the influence of AI and new editions of the national standards from ACTFL. I have taught nearly every course in the FLT curriculum, but in recent years I primarily teach courses on methodology, culture and intercultural competence, and program administration. I have also supervised more than 60 extensive master’s projects and the designs of about 120 teaching portfolio websites. I have also chaired hiring committees, represented the program on the College Graduate Council, and participated in MSU’s network of online program directors since its inception. My digital CV includes details on course designs, publications, and presentations.

Engagement and Advocacy

Moving into the position of program director meant a reassessment of my role and identity as well as my work-life balance and career path as I learned to manage a revenue-based initiative like a small business within a huge university. Instructional design, online interaction, and the development of virtual communities are all skills woven into the fabric of a successful online program, and I have presented on all of these topics at conferences across the U.S. In recent years, as an organic response to the challenges that our graduate students face in their work as language educators, I also began working with our national advocacy organization, JNCL-NCLIS, and engaged with congressional staff virtually and in Washington, D.C., in order to make the case for funding multilingual education. There are several posts about this work on my blog.