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Professor Schumann's interests lie in language acquisition, the neurobiology of language, and the language evolution. He was a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English in Iran, and after finishing his service he became the director Peace Corps TESL program in that country. He later taught ESL at the junior high school level in Waltham Mass. He received his doctorate in human development from a Harvard University Graduate School of Education in 1975. He has been a professor at UCLA since that time. Professor Schumann served as chair of the Department of Applied Linguistics and TESL for 16 years.