Image
Picture of Karyn Kessler
Associate Teaching Professor & EMS Program Director
Office Location
SH 3505
Office Hours
Fall 2025: Mondays and Thursdays, 1:30-3pm




Email
kkessler@linguistics.ucsb.edu
Zoom
https://ucsb.zoom.us/my/karynkessler
Bio

Karyn E. Kessler is an Associate Teaching Professor of Linguistics and Director of the English for Multilingual Students Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She teaches undergraduate courses in the TESOL minor, graduate writing and communication courses for international students across disciplines, and research design seminars through the university’s Honors Program. As a university and program leader, Dr. Kessler collaborates on the design and implementation of academic programs, overseeing curriculum, instruction, and assessment. She mentors faculty and leads initiatives that foster excellence in teaching, governance, and inclusive pedagogy. Her research focuses on writing, language, and expertise development across diverse learner populations, with emphasis on strategic priorities in higher education—linguistic diversity, academic integrity, liberal arts learning, and undergraduate research.

What do students have to say?

  •  “Professor Kessler's teaching approach is very organized, inspiring, and engaging. The course content is also very structured and easy to follow. I especially like the examples of each grammar knowledge because they help illustrate the concepts really well.” 
  • “I genuinely learned so much about grammar and how to teach it in this class. I hope to become an ELD teacher and this course really made me sure of the career I'm looking to fulfill. I learned not only the course material but also how to interact with my peers more and how I should go about teaching or helping someone else.”
  •  “This course included a lot of collaborative work and homework was based on completion which I loved. This allowed me to actually feel confident when submitting an assignment and motivated me more to look back at the answer keys and see what I did wrong rather than just looking at my grade and feeling bad about it.” 
  • “I thought that the collaborative assignments in this class were beneficial. It made me engage with the material a lot more, even though I was skeptical at first. I talked through a lot of the material with my partner when answering the questions for our assignments, which made me work with the material in a different way and understand a different perspective of the same material”
Courses

Courses often taught:

  • LING 140: Pedagogical Grammar (TESOL Minor Program)
  • LING 141: Second Language Acquisition (TESOL Minor Program)
  • LING 2G: Graduate Writing (International Students)
  • LING 3G: Advanced Graduate Writing (International Students)
  • INT W 1: Introduction to Letters & Sciences 
  • INT 84BR: Studies in Language, Writing and Learning (Honors Program)

 

Publications

Select presentations and publications on academic integrity, writing, and expertise development:

  • Not Just about Avoiding Plagiarism: Utilizing Research on the Development of Disciplinary Expertise to Teach Source Integration for Graduate and Undergraduate Writers, Innovations in Teaching and Learning Conference, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, September 2015.
  • Intersections of Expertise in Composition and Second Language Writing: Results from a Review of Research, Symposium on Second Language Writing (SSLW), Phoenix, AZ, November 2016.
  • Not Just about Avoiding Plagiarism: Connecting Source Integration to Disciplinary Development. Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), Chicago, IL, March 2018.
  • The Development of Writing and Writers: Reconsidering Plagiarism in a Framework of Student Learning, International Conference on English Across the Curriculum, Virtual Conference, May, 2021.
  • Reconsidering Plagiarism in a Framework of Student Learning: Institutional, Pedagogical and Developmental Perspectives on Writing and Writers. Writing Research Across Borders 2021, Virtual Conference, March, 2021.
  • Reconsidering the Relationship Between Plagiarism and L2 Student Writing Development, Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Pittsburgh, PA, March 2022.
  • P. Michiels, K. Kessler & P. Rogers. (2023). Paraphrase patterns of expert academic writers. Implications for writing development, writing pedagogy, and plagiarism policies. Patrones de paráfrasis de escritores académicos expertos: implicancias para el desarrollo de la escritura, pedagogía de la escritura y políticas de plagio. Literatura y Linguistica, 46, 153-189.
  • Methods for investigating the paraphrase practices of expert writers: Questions, Procedures, and Prototypes, Writing Research Across Borders, Trondheim, Norway, February 2023.
  • Building the Empirical Foundation of Writing Development and Source Integration in Writing, European Literacy Network, 2nd Annual Summit, Cologne, Germany. March 2025.
  • K. Kessler, P. Michiels & P. Rogers. (in press). Crafting Ethical Scholarship: A Practical Guide to Academic Integrity and the Mission of Higher Education. University of California Press.

Select presentations and publications on language program administration, including curriculum, instruction, and program development.

  • Globalizing the World, Internationalizing the University, and Practicing Applied Linguistics: Comparing Institutional Approaches to a Writing Pedagogy of Inclusion, American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL), Dallas, TX, March 2013.
  • The Shifting Landscape of Graduate Student Writing in and across Disciplines: Using Data to Align Instructional Practices with Learners’ Needs, Writing Research Across Borders (WRAB III), Paris, France, February 2014.
  • Mallett, K. & Zgheib, G. (2014). Campus Internationalization: A Center-based Model for ESL-ready Programs. In M. Cox & T. Zawacki (eds.) WAC and Second Language Writers: Research towards Linguistically and Culturally Inclusive Programs and Practices. Digital Book Series, WAC Clearinghouse. Urbana, NCTE.
  • The Opening Landscape of Graduate Student Writing in and across Disciplines: Using Data to Align Instructional Practices and Learners' Needs. Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). Indianapolis, IN, March 2014.
  • Habib, A., Mallett, K. & Haan, J. (Feb 2015). The Development of Disciplinary Expertise: An EAP and RGS-informed Approach to the Teaching and Learning of Genre. Composition Forum (31). Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition: Penn State University.
  • Integrating English Language and Composition Instruction: A Study of Three Instructional Models, International Conference on the Development of English Across the Curriculum, Hong Kong, December 2015.
  • J. Haan & K. Mallett. (2015). English Language Literacy and the Prediction of Academic Success in and beyond the Pathway Program. In P. Thomas & P. Takayoshi (eds.) Literacy in Practice: Writing in Private, Public, and Working Lives. Routledge.
  • K. Mallett, J. Haan & A. Habib (2016). Graduate Pathway Programs as Sites for Strategic, Languagesupported Internationalization. In S. Simpson, N. Caplan, M. Cox & T. Phillips (eds.) Supporting Graduate Student Writers. University of Michigan Press.
  • Keynote: Approaches to Graduate Writing Pedagogy Emerging from English Language Teaching, Consortium on Graduate Communication, Yale University, New Haven, CT, June 2016
  • Best Practices in Pathway Program Administration Curriculum and Support. Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. Denver, CO, April 2020.