Jin Sook Lee is a Professor of Education and Associate Dean in the Graduate Division at UCSB. She is also affiliate faculty in Linguistics, Asian American Studies, and the Interdisciplinary Applied Linguistics Emphasis. Her work explores how culture, identity, and community experiences shape language teaching and learning for English learners, heritage language learners, and bilingual students.
Dr. Lee’s work highlights how language develops in everyday life- at home, in schools, and across communities. Her research focuses on how immigrant families support heritage language maintenance and how multilingual students’ academic and social pathways develop across diverse school settings, including dual-immersion programs. She also directs School Kids Investigating Language in Life and Society (SKILLS), a community–university partnership founded in 2009 that introduces K–12 students to sociolinguistics while providing academic training, mentoring, and pathways into higher education. Across her scholarship, Dr. Lee advances educational practices and partnerships that value multilingualism and expand educational opportunities for minoritized students.
Dr. Lee earned her Ph.D. from Stanford University and previously served on the faculty in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University in 2003. A former ESL/EFL teacher, she has taught across ages, proficiency levels, and instructional settings in the US and abroad. She serves on the editorial boards of several leading journals in language education and bilingualism. Her honors include the Foundation for Child Development Young Scholar’s Award (2008), a Senior Fulbright Core Specialist Research Award (2012), a MERIT (Making Education Relevant through Innovation in Teaching) Fellowship (2020), and the UCSB Academic Senate Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award (2021).