Dr. Frank Li has been appointed as assistant vice president, International Programs and Global Engagement, effective July 6. The announcement was made June 8 by Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Frederika “Fraka” Harmsen, with the concurrence of President Alexander Gonzalez.

Li currently serves as chief international officer and director of the Office of International Education at California State University, Chico. He was selected after a national search that attracted a very competitive pool of applicants, Harmsen says. Prior to his current position, he served as director of the Honors Program, coordinator of the ESL/EFL Programs, and coordinator of the Linguistics Program at Chico State.  

As a professor of English, Harmsen says, Li is “a prolific scholar with a strong record of scholarly contributions in linguistics and several grant-funded projects. He has made very strong contributions to the development and expansion of comprehensive international education at CSU Chico and more broadly within the CSU system.”

“He has emerged as one of the leading national authorities in developing pathways that achieve strategic growth of international education for outbound and inbound students, faculty and institutional partnerships, and curriculum design that equip students with the skills to be competitive global citizens,” Harmsen says.

He earned his bachelor’s in English as a Foreign Language at Heilongjiang University, China; his master’s in Applied Linguistics (TESOL) with distinction at CSU Fresno; and his doctorate in Linguistics from the State University of New York at Buffalo, focusing on: “A Diachronic Study of V-V Compounds in Chinese.”