About

Michelle Benegas, Ph.D.

Associate Professor · Published Author · Keynote Speaker

Ph.D., Second Languages and Cultures Education

University of Minnesota

M.A., Education (ESL)

Hamline University

B.A., Spanish

University of Saint Thomas

Dr. Michelle Benegas is an Associate Professor and Co-Director of the TESOL Program at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she has taught since 2015. Her work sits at the intersection of language teacher education, instructional leadership, and multilingual learner success — and it moves between the university classroom, national and international keynote stages, and the school district.

From 2016 to 2022, she served as Principal Investigator of the English Learners in the Mainstream (ELM) Project, a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Office for English Language Acquisition. The ELM Project prepared 402 teacher leaders across Minnesota to support their colleagues in working with English learners, with findings showing statistically significant growth in mainstream teacher practice.

She is the co-author of two peer-reviewed books: Language of Identity, Language of Access (LILA): Liberatory Learning in the Multilingual Classroom (Corwin SAGE Press, 2024) and Teacher Leadership for School-Wide English Learning, 2nd edition (TESOL Press, 2025). As co-founder of the School-Wide English Learning (SWEL) professional development model, she brought SWEL under the wing of TESOL International Association, where it has become one of their best-selling professional development opportunities. She continues to deliver SWEL as a contracted trainer for TESOL.

In 2024, she was selected by the U.S. Department of State and Georgetown University for an English Language Specialist project in Bahrain — one of a small number of specialists deployed annually to support English language education internationally. She has delivered keynote addresses at Wisconsin TESOL and the University of Minnesota, and delivered an invited lecture at Queen's University Belfast, among conferences across the United States.

Before her faculty career, Dr. Benegas was an ESL and bilingual teacher at LEAP High School in Saint Paul Public Schools, working directly with immigrant and refugee students. That experience grounds everything she does.