Dr. Svetlana Cook is a Senior Faculty Specialist in Second Language Acquisition at the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) at the University of Maryland engaged in research on the efficacy of professional development of language educators and language programs at K-12 and postsecondary levels. Svetlana holds a PhD in Second Language Acquisition, an MA in Cognitive Linguistics, and an MA in Teaching English and French As a Second Language. With nearly 20 years’ experience as an educator, she is a Maryland-certified K-12 teacher and an expert in teaching methodology and world language instruction, learning and technology, and computer-based assessment, as well as an internationally renowned scholar in the field of second language vocabulary acquisition. Her publications on challenges in the acquisition of Russian have appeared in the international peer-reviewed journals Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Frontiers in Psychology, Second Language Research, Journal of Memory and Cognition, and the Mental Lexicon. She is a regular presenter at the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) conference, Second Language Research Forum (SLRF), and American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) convention, and other conferences showcasing research on language learning and teaching.