Billings has been teaching full-time at Santa Clara University since 1980, generally teaching non-fiction writing courses (please see bulleted list below). She has received awards for her teaching and advising, including the University's Louis and Dorina Brutocao Award for Teaching Excellence, the College's Logothetti Award for Excellence in Teaching, and Sigma Tau Delta's national Advising Award.
Billings has held numerous administrative positions for the Department and University. She served as the Director of Core Writing 2014-2017. From Fall 2011-Spring 2014, Billings served as Associate Chair of the Department of English and Director of Writing. In AY 2010-11, she served as Interim Associate Chair of the Department of English and Director of Writing. From July 2006 to June 2009, Billings served as Assistant to the President, a half-time administrative position. In AY03-04 she was the elected President of the Faculty Senate. Billings also served for numerous years on the following committees: as chair, the committee for the Best Freshman Essay Competition; the Athletic Advisory Board, both as a member and as vice-chair; the selection committee for the University Honors Program's Oxford Scholar; the Student Fellowships Committee; and the Writing Faculty Core Curriculum Committee.
Billings has also served the profession both internationally and nationally. In 2018-2019, Billings was a Fulbright Scholar working in the Spring semester for and with the Centre for English Language Proficiency at the University of Malta, evaluating its program and occasionally presenting at in-service faculty meetings or teaching some classes. In early September 2016, she gave invited lectures to English faculty and students of English at China Agricultural University in Beijing, China. In late Fall 2016 she reviewed the writing program at the Cave Hill Campus of The University of the West Indies. In 2015, she conducted a program review of a department of English in Southern California. Billings served 2014-16 as a discipline-specific reviewer of proposals from US scholars seeking to be Fulbright Scholars in other countries; she currently serves on a US Fulbright committee evaluating US student applicants' materials as the students seek to be English Teaching Assistants (ETAs) in the Mediterranean. In Fall 2009, Billings worked as a Fulbright Scholar for the Open Campus of the University of the West Indies, primarily facilitating teacher-training workshops in the teaching of writing for faculty in five different countries of the Eastern Caribbean. Billings has also served as (1) an officer of the Northern California-Nevada Affiliate of the Council of Writing Program Administrators for three years and (2) as an external reviewer for applicants for promotion to higher ranks at different universities. Currently Billings is the moderator of the Santa Clara chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the International English honors society, for which Billings served as the Far West Regent 2000 - 2004.
- First-year composition and rhetoric
- First-year composition and rhetoric for Honors students
- Writing about Literature and Culture
- Argumentation
- Creative Nonfiction
- Practicum in Tutoring Writing
- Senior Seminars (e.g., on Tennessee Williams)