He has been teaching Persian language to foreign students since 1996 at the Imam Khomeini International University (IKIU) in Qazvin, Iran.
For the first time in Iran, Dr. Vakilifard initiated and designed the Bachelor (B.A) program in “Teaching Persian Language” to foreign and Iranian students.
This required designing syllabi and determining the goals and the teaching resources for the program's 70 specialized, compulsory, and optional courses.
In 2011, he established the "Journal of Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages",[3] Iran's first academic periodical in the field, in which he serves as Director-in-Charge and Editor-in-Chief until 2020.
Dr. Vakilifard is a frequent speaker at conferences and conducts regular workshops for Persian language teachers in Iran and abroad.