Mary Jo Lubrano is Associate Director (Language Education and Research) at the Center for Language Study. She holds an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership in Second Language Acquisition and two M.A. degrees—one in Foreign Language Education and the other in Applied Linguistics (Language Testing). She joined the CLS in 2013 as Language Testing Specialist and was promoted to Associate Director in 2017. In her current role, she provides professional development for language instructors and graduate students, oversees the Fundamentals of Language Teaching seminar for graduate students, and supports the SLA certificate program. She is also a standing member of the Language Study Committee.
Before coming to Yale, she was a tenured lecturer at the University of Perugia (Italy), where she also coordinated assessment across all language programs. She is a dually certified ACTFL OPI tester in Italian and English and has served as an ACTFL trainer since 2006. She was an advisory member of the committee tasked with revising the ACTFL Guidelines in 2024 and currently serves as testing advisor for the Bureau of International Language Coordination, NATO’s advisory body for language education and testing.
Her research and publications focus on high-stakes proficiency validation, assessment literacy, and multilingualism. In her free time, she enjoys tennis, padel, and pickleball.