Birkmaier taught at the University of Minnesota, and was founding president of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL).

[6] "If students can't see any relevancy between what they're learning in language and their everyday lives, they could care less," she told a 1972 interviewer about her classroom strategies.

[7] Birkmaier was invited to speak to professional groups about education the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

[11] Birkmaier married fellow educator Rudolph Frank Kogl; he was born in Austria.

[6] In 1980, the ACTFL established Emma Marie Birkmaier Award for Doctoral Dissertation Research in World Language Education.