Ben Christensen, Ph.D., received his doctoral degree from the University of Washington (Seattle, Wash.) in 1968 in Romance Languages and Literatures with a focus on Language and Language Learning. He has been at San Diego State University in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese since 1968 to the present. In 1971 he was named as the resident director of the California State University International Programs in Madrid and Granada, Spain. He served a two-year term in the position. He has served as department chair, member of the university senate and has held numerous statewide positions in teacher training programs in California. For three years he served as president of the California Foreign Language Teachers Association. Dr. Christensen has authored and co-authored seven books and written several articles on the teaching of languages. During his professional life he has given over one-hundred workshops and conference presentations. During the seven-year period from 1993 to 2000, he held the position with Dupont International as a committee member of the Spanish Dupont Prize for Science. He has directed numerous study-abroad programs in Mexico, Spain and Costa Rica. He is the recipient of the Stephen A. Freeman Award, sponsored by the Northeast Conference on Language Teaching for the most outstanding article published in 1975 in the field of language teaching. He is one of the two co-directors for the development of the EXIGE exam (the international exam for business Spanish). His teaching area includes Spanish linguistics, Spanish for Business and Translation. Outside interests are golf, travel and his grandchildren.