Dr. Jennifer Renn is currently the Senior Director of Adult Language and Literacy Education at the Center for Applied Linguistics. In her role, she oversees adult English language education programs, including the English for Heritage Language Speakers Program, and leads the BEST 3.0 English language assessment team. Prior to returning to CAL in 2026, she was a Research Assistant Professor and the Executive Director of the Center for Literacy and Language Education and Research at Purdue University. At Purdue, she was co-Investigator of Parental Inclusion in Language and Research (Project PILAR), funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition, which worked with teachers and instructional coaches in school districts with dual language education programs. She was also a co-Investigator on the Science of Reading Implementation Grant funded by the Lilly Endowment, Inc. She was an Institute of Education Sciences  postdoctoral scholar in early child education at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) from 2010-2013.

Dr. Renn holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as well as a B.A. in Economics and Government with a concentration in International Relations from Cornell University. Her research uses mixed methods approaches to investigate topics related to sociolinguistics, language assessment, educator training, instructional coaching, dual language bilingual education, and language variation and identity. Dr. Renn has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in general linguistics, language instruction, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, assessment, and field methods at institutions including Georgetown University, George Washington University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Mary Washington, and Purdue University. She is bilingual in English and German.