Jin came to Hamilton in 1989 after receiving a master's and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She started the Chinese Program at Hamilton in 1989, and in 1996 helped establish the Associated Colleges in China program, a rigorous study abroad consortium in Beijing. Jin was named the 1998 CASE National Outstanding Baccalaureate College Professor of the Year and in 1996 received Hamilton’s 1963 Award of Teaching Excellence. Jin’s primary interest is language processing and language acquisition. In addition to her books on psychology of language development and studies of language acquisition, she has published numerous articles in professional journals. Her recent research focus has been on classroom process and its effect on language acquisition, resulting in six articles published in 2004-2007 in Journal of Chinese Language Teachers Association and other books. Jin is also interested in language pedagogy and is the lead author of three sets of textbooks. A two-volume series, Crossing Paths: Living and Learning in China and Shifting Tides: Culture in Contemporary China (both with DeBao Xu), was published in 2003. She was on the board of the Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA) and was president in 2004-2005. In 2006 she was elected vice president of National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL) and she will assume presidency of NCOLCTL during 2008-2010.
