Since 1991, Dr. Ning’s administrative duties have included general oversight of the Center for Chinese Studies at UH, assistance with long-term fundraising for endowments in Chinese Studies, Center-wide initiatives including international links and study abroad programs, town-grown projects such as the Legacy: History of the Chinese in Hawai’i program, and grant-writing/project management for projects such as the ABC (Alphabetically-based Computerized) Chinese-English Dictionary. She is currently US director of the Confucius Institute, a project of CCS, that promotes Chinese language education in Hawaiʻi and the US. Her research interests include Chinese language pedagogy and materials development, Chinese comic literature, and Chinese film. She regularly conducts teacher training classes for secondary and post-secondary levels on performance-based language testing and training, and gives a wide range of lectures on Chinese culture to both academic and non-academic audiences. In 1998, she was president of the US-based international Chinese Language Teachers Association, in 1999 its immediate-past president, and from 2000-2009 served as its executive director.
