Ellen Knell works as the associate director of curriculum and instruction at the Center for Language Studies and as an assistant professor at BYU, where she supervises over 60 less commonly taught languages and coordinates the Dual Language Immersion endorsement.
Knell has spent more than 10 years in Asia and is a Chinese (Mandarin) speaker. After teaching in a number of international schools in Hong Kong and consulting for English immersion in Xi'an, China, she attended graduate school at Hong Kong University and then the University of Utah. Following the completion of her Ph.D., she worked for the Utah State Board of Education and BYU Chinese Flagship, supervising Chinese language programs. She loves working with graduate students, and recent research has focused on the neuroscience of multilingualism using eye tracking, EEG and brain imaging.
Her remarks will be broadcast live on BYUtv, BYUtv.org (and archived for on-demand streaming), KBYU-TV 11, Classical 89 FM, BYUradio 107.9 FM, and SiriusXM 143. Video, text, and audio are archived on speeches.byu.edu.