Paula received her bachelor's degree in English literature and master's degree in teaching English as a second language from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She served as an English teaching fellow in Cuenca, Ecuador, and worked in Alexandria and Cairo, Egypt, where she taught English as a foreign language and trained local teachers. Her ESL experience includes teaching children in the Department of Defense Dependent Schools in Butzbach and Bad Nauheim, Germany; adults in a Raleigh, North Carolina, public school program she coordinated; students in community colleges in Raleigh and Champaign; and students in both the Intensive English Program and English Language Support Programs at MU.