Janet L. Eyring: Mormon Scholar

Janet L. Eyring is a professor of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL).

She was born in Berkeley, California and earned her bachelor’s degree in Spanish from Brigham Young University, her master’s in TESOL from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her PhD in applied linguistics also from UCLA.

She is a professor at California State University Fullerton. She chaired the Department of Modern Languages at Cal State from 2003 to 2010. Her research areas include pedagogical grammar, experiential learning, service-learning, technology and language learning, and adult ESL.

Eyring is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She served as a full-time missionary to Toronto, Canada, but began to doubt the truth of the Church and left it for twenty years after finishing her mission. She was part of a panel that discussed “The Loss and Rekindling of Faith,” which was part of the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR) conference in August 2013. She detailed her journey of doubt and spiritual search, which led her back to activity in the Church. She said that there were many “missed opportunities for service” while she was away.[1]

She is married to Brian Thompson and has two stepdaughters.