Tiger Profile: Lisa Chang Ahnert

Lisa Chang Ahnert (张丽超) was born in Jinan, Shandong and grew up in Taiwan. She graduated from Tunghai University, majoring in Foreign Languages and Literatures. She earned a Master’s Degree in Applied Linguistics from Oberlin, where she served as a Teaching Assistant in Asian Studies. Lisa was recruited by Professor Chen Daduan 陈大端 to teach at the Middlebury Summer Chinese Language School in 1971, where she taught for five more summers under Professor Chen and Mrs. Lin. Over the course of her career teaching Chinese language, literature, and culture, Lisa taught at Princeton, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and Southern Methodist University (SMU) in the US; at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia; and in Hong Kong at the British Defense Chinese Language School, City University (used to be HK City Polytech) and the Hong Kong International School. Her most recent positions were Director of the Asian Studies program at SMU and Director of Chinese Studies at Hong Kong International School. Lisa’s husband, Ed, studied Chinese at Middlebury. They have two children who both attended Princeton, studied Chinese, and participated in Princeton’s summer Princeton in Beijing program.