Dr. Jori Lindley, assistant professor of TESOL, brings her extensive knowledge of language to CSU Stanislaus’s English department, training the next generation of teachers and travelers.

She first started teaching at Stan State in January of 2020, primarily teaching online. She has a history of teaching abroad, as well as here in the states. Overall, with her love of traveling and language, Lindley is a professor students should get to know.

Primarily teaching classes within the TESOL track, she is excited to work with her students and get to use her training everyday.

Alina Yang (senior, English) is one of Dr. Lindley’s TESOL students.

“I’m looking forward to taking my senior seminar with her in the spring,” Yang says.

With Lindley’s vast knowledge about language, Yang enjoys what she brings to the classroom experience.

From the midwest, specifically around the Chicago area, Lindley received her B.A. in Linguistics and Russian from the University of Michigan. After working hard on her undergrad, she spent the next two years teaching abroad in Hungary. While she was in Europe, she spent time traveling as well as teaching abroad.

Lindley says that while Hungary was a smaller country, around the size of Indiana, she said she thought, “why not hit up all the ones around it?” 

In her first year abroad, she traveled to more than twenty countries. From Ukraine to Serbia to the Czech Republic, Lindley wasted no time exploring.

However, one memory that stands out to her is when she spent New Year’s Eve in Prague. 

“I stood in the town square when they were doing fireworks, which was insane,” she said. “I mean, people were like shooting rockets at each other. That was one of the craziest crowds I’ve been in, in my whole life.”

After two years of traveling and teaching, she headed back to the U.S., and attending UCLA. At UCLA, she received her M.A. in Applied Linguistics and then her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics. 

For her M.A., Lindley specifically focused on how we use “a” or “my.” For her dissertation, she focused on how we use “always” and “never.” 

She sought out why we use one word over the other, applying her knowledge of cognitive–functional linguistics as well as applied linguistics.

With her incredible knowledge of language, Lindley has put her education into action by also teaching at various universities. She first taught at UCLA for six years, then at Purdue University, Fort Wayne.

In January of 2020, Dr. Lindley was hired to work at Stan State, just before COVID started to affect the campus. She primarily taught online, with 2022 being her first semester teaching on campus. 

Primarily teaching classes within the TESOL track, she is excited to work with her students and get to use her training everyday.

Cecilia Xiong (junior, English), another student who has taken Lindley’s classes, also had great things to say about them.

In the fall semester of 2021, she took Lindley’s grammar class, which was entirely online due to COVID restrictions at the time. However, despite the distance and screens, Xiong remarks that Lindley was personal with her students.

“She was wanting to hear our stories, and we got to hear hers,” Xiong says.

At the beginning of every class session, Xiong remembers how Lindley would make a point to ask how each and every student was doing.

These amazing connections with her students definitely testifies to her teaching style as well as her kindness.

Aside from teaching and connecting with her students, Lindley also enjoys biking, camping, and hiking with her family. She says that she loves California and how amazing it is, especially with Yosemite National Park being so close.

She also loves the beauty of Stan State’s campus. She enjoys bird watching around campus, considering that there are so many different birds to see.