Contact: llc current and past student profiles

During the first semester in the program, students write an iinitial biography statement that is published here. For updated student and alumni activities and accomplishments, see News and Events.

• Cohort 1 (admitted 1998-1999)
• Cohort 2 (admitted 1999-2000)
• Cohort 3 (admitted 2000-2001)
• Cohort 4 (admitted 2000-2002)
• Cohort 5 (admitted 2002-2003)
• Cohort 6 (admitted 2003-2004)
• Cohort 7 (admitted 2004-2005)
• Cohort 8 (admitted 2005-2006)
• Cohort 9 (admitted 2006-2007)
• Cohort 10 (admitted 2007-2008)
• Cohort 11 (admitted 2008-2009)
• Cohort 12 (admitted 2009-2010)

Cohort 1

Karen Carpenter

Karen Carpenter teaches in the LLC and English Departments at UMBC. Currently, Dr. Carpenter teaches both LLC specific and hybrid undergraduate/graduate level classes for LLC and English, all of them in a decentralized, computer-assisted environment. Dr. Carpenter's current research interests in new media include visual literacy, social agency, and humanizing technology.

Contact: carpenter@umbc.edu; carpente@comcast.net; Karen@ecitydesigngroup.com

LaJerne Cornish

LaJerne Cornish received a B.A. in English in 1983, and an M.Ed. in 1994, both from Goucher College. She is now an instructor in the education department at Goucher. She supervises student teachers seeking certification in secondary education and also teaches the senior seminar in education. Prior to accepting the position at Goucher, Ms. Cornish worked in the Baltimore City Public Schools. She started her BCPS career as an English teacher. In the fall of 1992, after nine years of successful teaching, she became a coordinator as she piloted the Maryland's Tomorrow middle school program at Canton Middle School, maintaining that position for 4 years before becoming an administrator. When she left Canton this past August, she was the assistant principal. Ms. Cornish returned to the classroom as an instructor in Goucher's education department. She is delighted to have the opportunity to participate in the development of new teachers. The LLC program, combined with her current position, will allow her the opportunity to groom and prepare teachers to teach in a rapidly changing society and world. She appreciates the program's interdisciplinary design that reflects the need for connections between content, disciplines, and students. She expects to be better prepared as she prepares others to teach in diverse communities because of the richness of this program. Ms. Cornish's major research interest at this time is professional development schools for teachers. She wishes to determine the impact of the PDS on both the novice teacher and the veteran teacher (mentor teacher). She also wishes to discover if new teacher retention improves because of a PDS experience.

Contact: lcornish@goucher.edu; lajerne95@comcast.net

Codou Diaw

Codou Diaw is from Senegal. Prior to joining the Intercultural Communication Master's Program at UMBC, she earned her Bachelor's degree from the University of Dakar in English/ American and African Literatures and a Certificate of Simultaneous Interpretation from the University of Massachusetts. Ms. Diaw's background is in translation, interpretation, and education. She has worked as a freelance translator and interpreter for several international organizations and NGOs, both in Senegal and in the US. She has also taught French at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, and French and Spanish at UMBC, while in the in the INCC program. Ms. Diaw will concentrate on the "language, culture, and power in organizations and communities" track within the LLC program. Her interest is to incorporate gender, culture, and community participation issues in literacy programs for developing countries, specifically to help develop sound and successful literacy programs for girls and women in West Africa. Her research objective is to investigate those aspects that are often overlooked in the conception of such programs and to later incorporate them at the conceptual and policy-making level. Ultimately, she wishes to become a consultant and assist West African governments and organizations like UNESCO in their efforts to eradicate illiteracy in developing countries. Ms. Diaw is confident that the LLC program will take her a step closer to her professional goals.

Contact: cdiaw1@umbc.edu; codoudiaw@hotmail.com

Genevieve Kikelomo Dibua

Genevieve Dibua is from Nigeria. She came to the United States in March 1998. Prior to her arrival in the United States, she taught English Language, Literature in English and Oral English at the high school level in Nigeria before proceeding to the University of Benin, also in Nigeria, where she taught various aspects of linguistics for six years. Ms. Dibua's educational background includes a BA (Hons) in Linguistics with a concentration in English from the University of Ilorin, Nigeria, and an MA in Linguistics with a concentration in Syntax, Morphology, and Semantics from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. As an instructor, the teaching and supervision of honors essays in various aspects of sociolinguistics helped to expose Ms. Dibua to the immense potentials and possibilities of the field. It developed in her the need to see how language interacts with culture as well as the relevance and importance of multiculturalism and an interdisciplinary approach to linguistic and cultural issues; hence, her interest in the LLC program. At the end of the program, Ms. Dibua's goal is to continue to teach in a tertiary institution or work in a relevant government department or private agency, where there is the need, among other things, to display sensitivity to language, cultural and minority issues. Ms. Dibua's major research interest is on the relationship between gender, language, and culture. She hopes to write her dissertation on gender and taboo in an African cultural setting.

Contact: Adesomon@aol.com

Donna Kinerney

Donna Kinerney came to the LLC program with an ESL/foreign language background. She received a BA in German and Hearing and Speech Sciences and an MA in German Literature from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her master's thesis was on Rafik Schami, a Syrian-born German-speaking writer of contemporary fairy tales focusing on the situation of foreigners in Germany. She spent several years studying in Germany, developing enormous empathy for adults learning a second language. When she returned to the U.S. in 1989, she began teaching adult ESL, going on to earn a master's degree in ESOL/Bilingual Education. Ms. Kinerney has taught ESL at many different levels--K-12, adult, and community college--and has much experience working with the special needs of refugees. Currently she is the Coordinator of the Montgomery County Refugee Training Program whose goal is to offer language and skills training (including ESL for Jobs and nursing assistant programs, both of which Ms. Kinerney directs) to ensure that refugees access welfare as little as possible. Ms. Kinerney is interested in many different aspects of language, literacy, and culture, namely adult language learning (especially for women), adult education programs on international levels, literacy development, refugee language learning, and language policy and its effects on language instruction and learning. As she has always enjoyed learning about the parts of the world from which her students come, she will be incorporating some area studies as well.

Contact: donna.kinerney@montgomerycollege.edu

Sandra Yolanda López Rocha

Sandra López Rocha, born in Guadalajara, Mexico, came to the US as a Fulbright scholar in 1994 to earn a master's degree in Intercultural Communication from UMBC. Her master's thesis was "Intercultural training for American business people doing business in Mexico." Ms. López Rocha has been working for the MLL Department at UMBC for five years as a Spanish instructor. She has also served as the advisor of the UMBC Spanish Club, worked as a translator, tutored advanced Spanish students, and worked at the Resource Center for Language and Culture as research advisor for one group of Egyptian teachers. She also teaches Spanish at Catonsville Community College. Ms. López Rocha obtained her BA degree from the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico, in English as a Foreign Language. In Mexico, she taught English for three years and worked as an ESP teacher at the Escuela de Ciencias Quimicas de la Universidad de Guadalajara. She also participated in designing the curriculum of ESP courses at the school of Political Sciences. Ms. López Rocha's interest in the LLC program is focused on cross-cultural interactions both within a pluralistic society and in the international arena. In the future she hopes to design and implement programs that encourage educators to facilitate the process of learning culture in order to promote intercultural awareness. She would also like to use the new insights gained through doctoral study to build a bridge of cultural understanding between international business people.

Contact: lopez@umbc.edu; S.LopezRocha@bristol.ac.uk; Sandra.Lopez@CulturalAnthropology.co.uk

Diane Maloney-Krichmar

Diane Maloney-Krichmar holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Social Work and a Master of Arts degree in Counseling Psychology from Bowie State University (BSU). While an undergraduate student at BSU, she received grants to participate in a study-tour of West Africa and study Spanish for a semester in Mexico. These experiences had an important impact on shaping her professional and personal interests and attitudes. Since her graduation from undergraduate school in 1976, Ms. Maloney-Krichmar has been employed at Bowie State University in a series of administrative positions of increasing responsibility from Minority Admissions Counselor to Assistant Dean of Graduate and Continuing Education (1982). She is currently the Assistant Dean of the School of Continuing Education and Extended Studies. All of these positions have provided her with opportunities to experience life as a minority in a historically Black institution and make daily contact with a student body that includes traditional students, adult students, international students, senior citizens, veterans, and K-12 students. Ms. Maloney-Krichmar has managed U.S. AID-sponsored training projects for Central and South Americans, Elderhostel Programs, veterans' affairs, international training, and off-campus centers and programs, among other things. One of the most exciting projects she has had the opportunity to manage is the implementation of Bowie State's Government Services Administration (GSA) sponsored telecommuting center. Through a partnership with private industry and the Maryland National Guard, the project has been expanded to include video conferencing facilities, new off-campus interactive video classrooms, and a community Intranet. In addition to the funding ($480,000) provided by GSA, the University will receive $1.5 million to fully implement the project. Ms. Maloney-Krichmar's interest in the LLC concentration "Technology, Text, and Interpretation" is an outgrowth of her experience in implementing distance education programs using computer-mediated communications. She is interested in technology, learning, and teaching and would like to focus her research on some aspect of computer-mediated communications and the African-American community.

Contact: dmaloneykrichmar@ndm.edu; diane.krichmar@verizon.net

Kevin Maxwell

Kevin Maxwell completed both bachelor and master of science degrees from the College of Agriculture, Agriculture Education Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. He completed some additional graduate work to obtain certification in administration and supervision, and is currently the principal of Northwestern High School in Prince George's County and the Chief Educational Administrator for the community (feeder) schools: eleven school buildings and almost 8,000 students. Many of the students are eligible for free or reduced meals and many are students for whom English is a second language. Mr. Maxwell is interested in the LLC program as both a support for and an expansion of the work he does. He has been involved at UMBC with a Mellon Grant to improve the achievement of ESL students, and at several other colleges and universities with teacher training. His research interests include achievement in dual language programs, sub-schools, staff development, instructional and administrative technology, and program offerings and policy issues for disadvantaged students. Mr. Maxwell aspires to move into a school system superintendent role. Certification for this requires additional graduate work, and he has elected to enroll in the LLC doctoral program to blend his work interests and professional aspirations.

Contact: Kevin_M_Maxwell@mcpsmd.org

Isabel Moreno López

Isabel Moreno López is from Spain. She was born in Madrid on July 4, 1967. The first time she came to the US 15 years ago, she arrived on that exact date and thought people were very kind to celebrate her birthday in such a manner. The first language Ms. Moreno López learned was German since she lived in Munich from 1969-72. When she returned to Spain, she had her first experience overcoming cultural shock and had to learn her mother tongue. Later, she lived for five years in Paris where she attended high school, then came back to Spain at the age of 19 to earn bachelor's degrees in French Translation and Interpreting and in English Philology. Ms. Moreno López worked as an English and French instructor in Spain. She came to the US in August 1996 and began the master's program in Intercultural Communication from UMBC. She has also been working in the MLL Department as a Spanish instructor since that time. Her personal interests are very much related to politics. She considers herself an activist and has been a member of grassroots organizations for years. When she was in Spain, she belonged to an organization called Clowns without Frontiers. Her fellow clowns and she would travel to refugee camps to perform and deliver school materials. In this manner she traveled to Yugoslavia in 1993 and to the Sahara Dessert in 1994. As an activist she has also traveled to Cuba, Ecuador, and Mexico. At UMBC she has served as president of the Progressive Action Committee, in which she has organized lectures and round-tables and showed movies. Ms. Moreno López's interest in the Ph.D. program concerns both educational and political issues. She has been eager to begin the program and is very excited about the two courses she is taking.

Contact: imoren1@umbc.edu

David Truscello

David Truscello has an MA in English from Kent State University. He has taught ESOL at the Center for English Language Orientation Programs (CELOP) at Boston University, at the Agazziz Community School, and at La Alianza Hispana, Boston's largest multi-service agency for Latin American immigrants and refugees. He became Principal Teacher-Coordinator of the Adult ESOL program at La Alianza. In 1981, Mr. Truscello transferred to the Bilingual/ESOL Department at Roxbury Community College and served the same communities as at La Alianza. At Roxbury, he worked with Shirley Brice Heath on a project to train students to be ethnographers of their own lives. Mr. Truscello has sat on the Human and Civil Rights Committee of the Massachusetts Teachers Association and organized informational tours featuring teachers from Central America. He later moved to Washington, D.C., as National Co-ordinator of Nicaragua Debe Sobrevivir/Let Nicaragua Live. Mr. Truscello returned to teaching as an Adjunct English Instructor at the University of the District of Columbia then moved to Dundalk Community College, where he is a tenured Associate Professor, developmental writing, college composition, ESOL, and Spanish. He has also developed a computer-assisted language learning lab. Mr. Truscello hopes to conduct research on the effects of technology on language learning styles and strategy.

Contact: truscell@umbc.edu

Top

Cohort 2

Chadia Abras

Ms. Abras received her bachelor's degree from the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics at UMBC where she also studied Biochemistry. She then earned a master's degree in French Literature from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her master's degree thesis was on symbolism and the role of silence in 19th century French Theater. Since she graduated from UMBC, Ms. Abras has worked as a college instructor at College Park, Loyola, Towson, and UMBC. Currently, she is an Instructor in the Modern Languages and Linguistics Department at UMBC where she teaches French. Her native language is Arabic, but in Lebanon they are taught two languages as primary languages and a third as a second language; in Ms. Abras' case it is English. Ms. Abras is also the Vice President and part owner of "The American Institute of Medical Practice." She runs the United States office while other offices are located in Egypt, Cyprus, Lebanon and Bahrain. Technology is a key factor in running the business where Ms. Abras has a number of responsibilities including: designing and maintaining the web site, editing a quarterly newsletter "Health and Medicine," and communicating with the organization's culturally diverse members. Ms. Abras looks to the LLC program for the expansion of the work she does both as an educator and as an administrator of a small company. Her research interests are in the area of "Text, Technology and Interpretation." She is interested in researching the impact of modern technology and how it can be used in classroom instruction. She would like to focus her research on foreign language instruction through computer and internet mediated communication.

Contact: abras@umbc.edu

Silvio Avendaño

Mr. Avendaño first joined the UMBC community in 1997 where he arrived as a Fulbright Scholar from Nicaragua. He received his MA in Instructional Systems Development with a concentration in ESOL/Bilingual Education. Before coming to UMBC, Mr. Avendaño's background and experience included translation work, teacher training, and teaching English at both the college level and in the intensive English program (IEP). Mr. Avendaño received a BA in translation with a concentration in English from Universidad Centroamericana in Managua, Nicaragua. He worked as a freelance translator for several non-governmental organizations in Nicaragua. Mr. Avendaño's teacher training began right after graduating from college. Mr. Avendaño has participated as a presenter and coordinator in a number of conferences and seminars in Nicaragua, other Central American countries, and the United States. At present, Mr. Avendaño is organizing a TESOL Seminar for IEP and college teachers in Nicaragua in collaboration with UMBC and UCA. Before coming to UMBC, Mr. Avendaño worked in an undergraduate program in TESOL at Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in Managua and in an IEP. During the summer of '99, he went to Nicaragua to work as an academic advisor for the Language Department at UCA. He designed an innovative IEP and evaluated the undergraduate TESOL program. His interest in the LLC program is focused on teacher education. He would like to use the LLC program as an opportunity to explore new ways to educate EFL teachers. Mr. Avendaño is interested in investigating the ways teachers are trained and their attitudes toward such training. Through the doctoral program, he hopes to find answers to questions such as: What is behind teacher training that trainers do not perceive it the same way trainees do? What constitutes an effective EFL teacher education program in a Spanish speaking country? How can trainers help teachers improve their teaching at the same time that they improve their command of the target language? Mr. Avendaño currently works at the UMBC English Language Center (ELC) in a special TEFL Program for Egyptian Scholars where he teaches a class on educational technology in EFL. He also coordinates activities for international students here at the ELC.

Contact: savend1@umbc.edu, savendano@hotmail.com

Susan Finn Miller

Since moving from Michigan eight years ago, where she received her training and briefly taught high school English, Ms. Finn-Miller has been working in adult literacy in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. She has taught adult basic education, GED instruction, and ESOL, as well as family literacy. She has also been a coordinator, curriculum developer, and instructor in university-affiliated Intensive English Programs. In the past several years, her work has involved more and more professional development with adult literacy practitioners. She regularly develops and delivers a variety of training for adult literacy programs and staff as well as facilitates teacher research. This summer Ms. Finn-Miller had the opportunity to design and teach a graduate course on issues around teaching ESOL with adult learners. In the past year, her role has begun to expand to supporting those who teach in their public schools. She recently developed two in-service courses for ESOL and regular K-12 teachers. Ms. Finn-Miller has many interests which have fueled her interest in the LLC program. For the past several years, she has been keenly interested in the development of academic language for those learning English as adult learners. She is also keenly interested in the roles of teachers and learners. She would like to know how culture affects the expectations of both teachers and learners and how this, in turn, affects learning, particularly for those who have come to the US as immigrants. Recent learning theory has emphasized the social construction of knowledge. She would like to learn more about the role culture and cross cultural interaction play in the construction of knowledge. It is her goal that this focus will cut across her work with both adult learners and adult literacy practitioners and teacher researchers.

Contact: finnmiller@verizon.net

Chuck Hodell

Mr. Hodell's trip to join the second cohort in the LLC program has taken a somewhat non-linear route. Having the luxury of only attending one disastrous quarter of college when he was 18 in a full-time student mode, it seemed that Mr. Hodell was attending school and working at the same time for more than half his life. His undergraduate degree is in Labor Relations from Antioch University and his graduate degree is in ISD here at UMBC. He is presently a professor and Director of the Educational Design Unit at the National Labor College/George Meany Center for Labor Studies and part-time lecturer here at UMBC in the Masters program in ISD teaching 602 and 603 (Instructional Systems Development I and II). Mr. Hodell is presently on a leave of absence from Ameritech Corporation, the phone company in the Midwest. He has also been a union organizer, police officer and a musician. He is lucky enough to have worked extensively in Egypt and prepared training programs for organizations around the world. In December he will have a book published by the American Society for Training and Development on ISD. Mr. Hodell is interested in finding ways to make training work for the culture it is intended to serve. He has seen too many poorly designed education packages heaped on undeserving populations. He believes that the first step in finding answers to this series of problems is admitting that a new look needs to be taken at what culture means in the context of training. He is also interested in native American populations, especially Cherokee, and finding solutions for similarly displaced cultures. The rest of his life, Mr. Hodell shares with his five year old son Joe in their home on Kent Island in the Chesapeake Bay.

Contact: hodell@umbc.edu

Carla Jackson-Dickey

Ms. Jackson-Dickey is a 1983 graduate of Hood College in the field of special education. That fall, she became an employee of The Baltimore City Public School System. During her 17 years of service, she taught at the elementary, middle and high school levels. In addition, she has served as an assistant principal at Calverton Middle School and Cross Country Elementary School. In 1994, she was appointed principal of Cross Country Elementary where she had an opportunity to purchase computers and equipment to establish a state of the art computer lab and media center. Currently, she is the principal of Grove Park Elementary School. It is Ms. Jackson-Dickey's intent to design a professional development program that will provide on-going training for administrators and teachers on how to better serve and support the culturally diverse learner. The program will include strategies and techniques that can be utilized to increase the academic success of the African American male. In addition, a parent component will be integrated in the training to assist parents with increasing the academic success of their child. Ms. Jackson-Dickey believes the LLC Program will equip her with the necessary tools and knowledge to implement this model professional development program.

Contact: cjdickey@yahoo.com

Top

Derek Lewis

Derek Lewis comes to the LLC program after receiving a Bachelor's degree in English and a Master's degree in Instructional Systems Design with a concentration in ESOL/Bilingual Education from UMBC. Through his Master's program, he was able to teach abroad, spending a semester in Guayaquil, Ecuador as an English instructor at the Centro Ecuatoriano Norteamericano. Upon his return, Derek contributed work to the Mellon Foundation's "Project: WE TEACH" as he completed an ethnographic case study for his thesis work. Mr. Lewis recently completed his third year of ESOL instruction in Prince George's County before accepting a job in Howard County. Along with instructing ESOL students from kindergarten through fifth grade, this new position will allow him to work as a Reading Recovery teacher, assisting the literacy development of first-grade students through intense, one-on-one daily instruction. Throughout his teaching career, Mr. Lewis has participated in, and contributed to, several committees, including; staff development, textbook evaluation, teacher training, and teacher mentoring. Mr. Lewis' entrance into the LLC Doctoral program stems from his established interests in language acquisition and his more recent focus on literacy development. By enrolling in this program, he hopes to expand his knowledge and experiences with regards to these interests as he focuses his research on learning styles and strategies. More specifically, Mr. Lewis would like to explore the variations among ESOL students involved in a Reading Recovery program in reading strategy development and selection. He seeks to discover how ethnicity and native language affect the choices made and strategies employed by these students during their initial literacy training.

Contact: dlewis15@hotmail.com

Adriana Medina López Portillo

Contact: medina@umbc.edu

Yasuko Nadayoshi-Walcott

After graduating from Kwassui Women's College, the oldest women's college in Japan, Ms. Walcott came to the United States to study Industrial Psychology. She did this with the great ambition to help Japanese women who were entering the workforce instead of following the traditional housewife model. Upon returning to Japan, she quickly learned that Japan was not ready for independent women with foreign educations. However, a secretarial job at a prestigious music production company was the beginning of a string of various jobs which shaped Ms. Walcott's way of thinking and living. Upon marriage and returning to the United States, a county where Ms. Walcott never thought she would settle it, she ended up as a "dorm mother" at New Mexico Highlands University. It was here that she received her MA degree in Counseling. After moving to Maryland, Ms. Walcott worked for the Montgomery County government for some time. She went on to spending some time in child rearing and volunteering for ten years in the Frederick County school system and other civic organizations. She is very proud to have been named an honorary life member of the Maryland PTA with more than 1,000 hours in -school service. Before coming to UMBC as a Japanese language instructor in 1994, Ms. Walcott taught Japanese to children three years old and older. She also taught adults in a civic organization, the Japanese Embassy School, Montgomery County schools, and in Montgomery Community College. She currently holds an adjunct position at UMBC and Loyola College as a Japanese lecturer.

Contact: walcott@umbc.edu

Loreto Sanchez

Ms. Serrano Sanchez is a native of Spain. She is both the Computer-Assisted Instruction Specialist and one of the Spanish Coordinators in the Modern Languages and Literatures Department at Johns Hopkins University. She also serves as both the Course Chair of the Spanish Division and the author of all online Spanish courses. After working for several years in Spain as a teacher of Spanish as a second language, Ms. Serrano Sanchez decided that she wanted a change in her life. So, she crossed the Atlantic and accepted a position as a teacher in Halifax County High School in South Boston, Virginia. After a year, she decided to study again and applied to a Spanish Master's program at Howard University. In this program she specialized in Modern Languages Teaching Methodology. After two years of looking for a Ph.D. program that had an interdisciplinary focus on learning languages and technology, she found the LLC Program at UMBC. This program appeared to meet her expectations and to this day she is glad to be involved with it. During the 1998-99 academic year, Ms. Serrano Sanchez took two courses at U.N.E.D. (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia) to become a specialist in distance education and the application of new technologies in education. These courses, in combination with her past experiences at UMUC, narrowed her interest to foreign languages at a distance. She is confident that the LLC program will provide her with a deeper knowledge in this area of interest. During the past five years in this country, Ms. Serrano Sanchez has had the opportunity to grow both intellectually and as a professional. But the most important development during this period has been meeting the man that would become her husband and starting to build a home in this multicultural society.

Contact: loreto@comcast.net

Top

Chi-Chi Uchendu

Ms. Uchendu was born in Champaign, Illinois and spent the first eight years of her life there. Her parents then decided it was time to expose her to her own people and culture. Thus, her family moved back to Nigeria when she was about eight-and-a-half years of age where she was raised. Ms. Uchendu's educational background includes a Bachelor's degree in Modern Languages with a concentration in French Language and Literature from the University of Calabar, Nigeria, as well as a Master's of Arts degree in Intercultural Communication from UMBC. Prior to earning her Master's degree, Ms. Uchendu taught French to 7th and 8th graders in a Nigerian boys' high school. After graduating from UMBC, she worked as an interpreter and patient advocate for the Johns Hopkins Hospital over a two-year period. She was assigned specifically to the Africa Division of the Johns Hopkins Department of International Services. This gave her the opportunity not only to utilize a language she loves, but also to interact with Africans from all over the continent and assist them in their interactions with cross-cultural challenges they inevitably encountered. She was also involved in implementing programs with various international organizations such as the Ministries of Health in order to attract international patients to Johns Hopkins. Ms. Uchendu developed an interest in West African speech patterns during her Master's program, finding them fascinating because they are distinctly different from many Western discourse patterns. She discovered that this is a vast and intriguing area that has hardly been explored at all. Ms. Uchendu's Master's thesis was entitled "West African Men in Conversation." The fact that there are so many areas to discover, explore, and share in this field has motivated her to build upon her earlier research. She trusts that the LLC program will provide her with this opportunity.

Contact: cundie@aphrc.org; chichi_23@hotmail.com

Paula L. Webber

Paula Webber holds a Master of Arts in Student Development in Higher Education from the American University and a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication from Emory and Henry College, located in Emory, VA, a beautiful corner of southwest Virginia that is often referred to as "God's Country." Ms. Webber was one of three African-American female students at Emory, with a total minority enrollment of 14 out of 782 students. Ms. Webber is the Science, Engineering and Mathematics (SEM) Fellowship Program Coordinator for the Model Institutions for Excellence (MIE) Program Initiative at Bowie State University (BSU). The BSU MIE Program is funded through a grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Through the MIE grant, Ms. Webber works directly with other MIE minority serving institutions: Xavier University of Louisiana (the only African-American Catholic institution); Spelman College (African-American female college); University of Texas at El Paso (Hispanic serving institution); Universidad de Metropolitana of San Juan, PR (Puerto Rican serving institution); and Oglala Lakota College of South Dakota (Native-American serving institution), and of course, Bowie State University (the oldest HBCU in the State of Maryland). Prior to joining the MIE Program at Bowie State, Ms. Webber worked for a contractor at the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. There, she coordinated summer internship and cooperative education programs open to U.S. and international students in the Earth Sciences. Ms. Webber and colleagues founded CAISE International, a non-profit organization that provides consulting in the areas of developing, designing and administering Educational Projects, Information Systems Development, Program Assessment and Evaluation, and Survey Administration and Analysis. Ms. Webber will concentrate on "Language, Culture, and Power in Organizations and Communities." She is interested in issues related to talented and gifted learners.

Contact: pwebber12@yahoo.com

Eleanor (Dody) Welsh-Parris

It is with great excitement that Ms. Welsh-Parris comes to the LLC program, having declined Ph.D. programs in Linguistics, Composition and Rhetoric, and English Literature in an effort to find the right combination for her career interests. She is currently an assistant professor of English at Chesapeake College on Maryland's Eastern Shore, where the teaching of composition is a major job responsibility. However, she needs to be diverse enough to teach introductory literature classes; American, British or World Literature survey courses, and fill other teaching needs as they arise. In the past year, she has taught an interdisciplinary capstone course called "The Nature of Knowledge" as well as "American Cinema/American Culture." Technology and distance education is becoming increasingly important in this environment since the college services an area of five rural counties. Last fall, Ms. Welsh-Parris was awarded an institutional mini-grant to begin working on an on-line literature course which she developed over the spring and summer and is offering for the first time this fall. As a result of this grant, she is also exploring various ways to incorporate distance learning practices and Internet technology into her face-to-face classrooms. She hopes to continue research in the nature of the discourse associated with these newer media. Ms. Welsh-Parris received her Bachelor's degree in English from James Madison University, and her MA in English from University of Maryland, College Park. In addition to teaching, she has worked as a freelance writer and a self-employed sailmaker.

Contact: dwparris@chesapeake.edu ; parris@goeaston.net

Top

Cohort 3

Beverly Bickel bickel@umbc.edu

Donna Neutze neutzed@erols.com

Steve Shin steveshin60@hotmail.com

Joby Taylor joby.taylor@umbc.edu

Top

Cohort 4

Chief Ankama

Chief Ankama comes from the Oshana region of Namibia, an area in which more than half of Namibia’s population lives. After completing secondary education, partially by distance, he entered Ongwediva Teachers’ Training Centre, where he obtained a Primary Education Certificate. Subsequently, he obtained a Diploma in Expert Photography from Africa United College-RSA, a B.Ed. in English Language Teaching from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and an M.A. in English Language Teaching from the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. A teacher since 1977, Chief taught History, Agricultural Science, English and Life Skills and also served as Head of the Department of Languages in a number of secondary schools and at the teacher training college from which he received his teaching certificate. Other positions held in education include: Regional Facilitator for English Senior Secondary, through which he ran teacher training workshops for the Ministry of Education and Culture; Regional Education Officer for English, Senior Secondary; and Lecturer for English and Head of the Department of Language Special Courses in the Language Centre at the University of Namibia’s Northern Campus. He currently holds the position of Deputy Director of the University of Namibia –Northern Campus. Chief has also served as Secretary to the Secretary General of the Council of Churches in Namibia and as Co-Editor of The Namibian Worker, a newsletter of the National Union of Namibian Workers, during its struggle against apartheid in Namibia. After Namibia’s independence, he was elected first Mayor and Chairman of Oshakati, the second largest city in Namibia, a position he resigned when left to study at the University of Warwick. In addition to the Fulbright scholarship, which is supporting his study at UMBC, he has also received a number of other scholarships, including ones from USIA and SEAMEO.

Contact: cankama@yahoo.com

Paula Botelho

Paula Botelho holds a M.A. degree in Education with a concentration in Language from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, and a B.S. in Occupational Therapy. Her main work experiences before moving to the U.S. include teaching, consulting and publishing. For many years prior to getting her doctoral degree she worked with deaf education in Brazil, in various domains -adult education, teacher training programs, vocational counseling, and consulting, dealing with students, families, and institutions. Some major professional experiences include: Department of Education/subsection special education, Minas Gerais, Brazil, as a consultant and researcher; Department of Planning and Research/ Department of Labor and Social Assistance of the state of Minas Gerais, as the Director of Planning and Research; Vocational Training Program Coordinator, family counselor, and school to work Transition Program Coordinator at Francisco Sales School for the Deaf, in Belo Horizonte/Minas Gerais, Brazil, in addition to teaching at the elementary, undergraduate, and graduate levels. Her teaching at the undergraduate level earned her several awards for outstanding teaching. She has published two books and a number of papers, and organized several major events. She is a native speaker of Portuguese, and proficient in English, Spanish and Brazilian Sign Language.

Contact: Botelho1@umbc.edu; paulabotelhobh@gmail.com

Top

Rebekah de Wit

Growing up with a Dutch father and an American mother, Rebekah de Wit became interested in multilingualism and multiculturalism at an early age. She has subsequently pursued study and work in the areas of language and culture and goes abroad whenever possible. As an undergraduate at UMBC, Rebekah majored in Ancient Studies with concentrations in classical archaeology, Latin, and Greek. In addition, she studied seven modern languages. She continued her interest in languages in the ESOL/Bilingual Program at UMBC, where she received her Master’s degree. Rebekah acquired much of her language and cross-cultural experience overseas, having studied or lived abroad in Belgium, England, Egypt, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Wales. She has also excavated at ancient Roman sites in France and Italy, and interned in the Welsh language division of a television production company in Wales. Given her background, international higher education administration was a natural career choice. She is currently the International Student Advisor for the Master’s program in ESOL/Bilingual Education at UMBC. Previously, she worked in study abroad administration at the University of Wales, Swansea. She has also taught undergraduate Latin at Loyola College and worked as a researcher at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. In the LLC program, Rebekah will research the effects of various program structures on the language and cultural acquisition of American students studying abroad. She hopes to increase the participation of American students in study abroad programs and to administer programs that maximize the students’ integration into their host communities.

Contact: kdewit1@umbc.edu; rdewit@bostonconservatory.edu

Abdoulaye Mbaye

Abdoulaye Mbaye is from Senegal. He received his Bachelor's degree and a Master's degree in English/American and African literatures at the University of Dakar, Senegal. He also earned a high school teaching certificate at Ecole Normal Superieure, a teacher training school in Dakar. Abdoulaye has taught English in Senegal, during which time he participated in the first West Africa English Language Teaching Seminar held in Dakar. He also attended a four-month course on Curriculum Design and Instructional Materials Development in Madras, India. From that experience, he drafted a curriculum for English for 10th, 11th and 12th graders. Abdoulaye first came to the United States in 1999 on a Fulbright teacher exchange. He taught French at Simon Sanchez High School in Guam and English literature at Guam Community College. Abdoulaye believes that in this changing world, a great deal should be done to help the majority of the world’s population get out of the dark valley of illiteracy. He looks to the LLC program as a place where he can explore approaches that he can use in contributing to the efforts of African governments in their struggle to eradicate illiteracy. He will focus on how to help design and implement valid literacy programs for adults in West Africa, with his dissertation research on the education of adults in Senegal. When he completes his doctorate, Abdoulaye plans to work in adult education with African governments or international organizations.

Contact: ablayembaye@yahoo.fr

Hannah Mugambi

Hannah Mugambi began her academic career as a teacher of English and Kiswahili in an all girls secondary school, on the eastern slopes of Mount Kenya, her native country. In addition to spending time on classroom teaching, she also took keen interest in the guidance and counseling of her students. It was at this early stage of her career that she began to relate her knowledge of language and communication with issues of adolescent social behavior. The main focus of her career, however, has been on language teaching. She attended the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, on a scholarship funded by the Overseas Development Agency and administered by the British Council. After receiving an M.S. degree in Applied Linguistics, she became an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Nairobi, where she taught Academic Communication Skills to freshmen, developed teaching materials, and undertook research. She was soon offered promotion to Lecturer at Egerton University, situated in the rural Rift Valley Province. The appointment broadened her experience in language teaching research and distance education. Sine then she has conducted research and published in the area of language, gender, and sexual behavior. She is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Languages and Linguistics and the Coordinator of Programs at the Center for Women Studies and Gender Analysis at Egerton University. She is also a trainer in the Education for Life Program and a coordinator in the Military Science Program, which offers distance education courses, including English Language and Communication Skills, to military personnel in the Kenyan Department of Defense. As a Fulbright scholar, Hannah intends to build on her academic training and community work Hannah and then, to Kenya to teach at Egerton University, and to carry out research, publish and contribute to gender and HIV/AIDS eradication programs in her country.

Contact: mugambi1@umbc.edu

Ingrid Watson Miller

Ingrid Watson Miller began her professional career as a Spanish teacher in the D. C. Public Schools. It was there that her interest in Afro-Hispanic literature began, because all Spanish teachers were required to take a course in this virtually unknown area of study in order to receive certification. Over the years, she has researched and presented papers and workshops on this topic, as well as published a translation and an anthology, funded by the Cafriz Foundation. During her last year as a high school teacher, Ingrid received the “Distinguished Foreign Language Educator.” As an Assistant Professor of Spanish, Ingrid taught Spanish and Spanish literature at Jackson State, Hampton, Norfolk State and Johnson C. Smith Universities. She is currently working in the Continuing Education Department of Bowie State University. Ingrid received a B.A. in Spanish (with German/Education minors) from North Carolina Central University, a M.Ed. in Curriculum Development from Howard University, and an M.A. in Spanish literature from Catholic University. Additionally, she participated in a language program at Instituto Forester in San José, Costa Rica. Ingrid believes that literature is the key that opens the door to the culture of a given society. As a student of the LLC program, she plans to further her studies in Afro-Hispanic literature in order to be able to teach culture through literary works. Her goal is to be able to analyze the literature of selected Afro-Hispanic women writers, especially Luz Argentina Chiriboga of Ecuador.

Contact: ingrid1@umbc.edu

Top

Cohort 5

Faida Abu-Ghazaleh

Born in Jericho, the oldest city in the world, Faida moved with her family to Jordan in 1967, during the war. She finished her schooling in Jordan and was able to continue her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Yarmouk University in Irbid-Jordan. Given her family’s situation in Jordan, she became interested in History and Political Science in which she earned her BS degree. To obtain a more comprehensive knowledge about the area, she pursued her Master’s degree in Prehistory and Near East Archaeology. During this period, she participated in many local and international excavations in different sites in Jordan and Palestine. She is also interested in photography, which developed at a young age with the support of her family. She used her photographic talents to become a photographer of archeological sites and also to photograph people’s face expressions and the natural world. Some of her photographs were exhibited in Israel galleries. After graduation (after the peace process) she moved in 1995 to work at BirZeit University and then to Al Najah National University in the West Bank (Palestine) teaching undergraduate students archaeology and archeological excavation in the Palestinian territories. She found her experiences working with students of different backgrounds so interesting that she decided to enroll in the LLC program for further study. Her principal research interests are in Palestinian people and culture. She plans to focus on “Women’s Leadership in Two Urban Palestinian Communities under Occupation” and helps to promote further cooperation between UMBC and academic institutions in the Palestinian territories upon her return. She hopes to work with women in Palestinian society to raise their awareness about their rights and their value.

Contact: faidagh@hotmail.com

Sheila Allen

Sheila Allen comes to the LLC Program with experience both teaching and working with teachers. She has formally taught reading to grades one through eight as well as community college students and is now Education Program Coordinator at Harford Community College. Her recent work with career changers interested in becoming teachers has motivated her to help these people make this transition into a new career that has a culture of its own. Sheila Allen received her Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education and a Master of Education with a Reading Specialist Certificate from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. While teaching in Shamokin, PA, she created, with three other colleagues, an elementary/middle school reading program for the district. She created later a middle school program in Southern York, PA. When she began teaching reading at Harford Community College, the college was just beginning a new developmental reading program, which she helped to develop and led to publication of a textbook, Making Connections, which was the first to use whole chapters of college textbooks to help prepare readers for college reading. Sheila became Education Program Coordinator at Harford Community College two years ago. Since then she has served on the MD state committee responsible for creating a new education degree, the Associate of Arts in Teaching (A.A.T.). This outcomes-based degree allows students to complete a program at a community college and transfer to any four-year institution, public or private, in the state of Maryland, without loss of credit. Currently, she chairs the Maryland Association of Directors of Teacher Education at Community Colleges and has recently completed work with Leadership Maryland in holding the first Career Changers Fair for people interested in changing careers to teaching. Her work with the A.A.T. has prompted her to search for a performance-based outcomes program for career changers to assist them in transition to the career of teaching while providing for more competent teachers in our Maryland classrooms.

Contact: sallen@Harford.edu

Lubee Birru

Lubee Birru came to the United States from the Oromiiyaa Zone of Ethiopia, an area in which more than half of the Ethiopian population lives and speaks Oromo language as their mother tongue. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Political Science and his Master of Arts degree in Adult Education from the University of the District of Columbia. He also took classes in the department of African Studies at Howard University, but before he could finish his PhD program, he was appointed Ambassador to the Ivory Coast by the new Ethiopian Government in 1991, so he returned to Africa. He returned to USA two and half years later. A principal concern of Lubee’s is the welfare of Oromo refugees and nationals living in North America. In 1974, he founded the Union of Oromo with only 6 members. Today, the organization has over three thousand registered members. He has served in a number of capacities with the organization, with his current responsibilities include planning and organizing study groups on cultural, historical, economic, and political topics; providing public education through briefings, lectures, and public meetings; and organizing the Union’s annual Congress. Lubee is currently employed at the Oromo Center in Washington, DC, where recently resettled Oromo refugees receive help. During the past eight years, he has been developing curriculum and training materials to teach American history and culture to these refugees. Lubee’s research in the LLC program will focus on the role of Oromo elders in preventing violence and resolving conflicts among Oromo refugee families and communities in North America.

Contact: Gadaoromiya@prodigy.net

Top

Gwen Creel-Erickson

A recent transplant to Baltimore, Gwen Creel-Erickson grew up in Nashville, Tennessee where she received her B.S. in Communication Studies from Vanderbilt University. After a brief stint in the music industry, Gwen left the US to experience living abroad in Paris, France. While studying French in Paris, she was inspired by her French professor and decided to pursue teaching as a career. Gwen received her TEFL certificate from the Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie de Versailles in Rambouillet, France and later completed an MA in Teaching English as a Second Language at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts. During her time in Boston Gwen taught students in an inner city public high school. It is here that she began to develop an interest in links between previous experiences and the performance of students in her class. Upon completion of her Master’s degree, Gwen and her husband were given the opportunity to move to Sydney, Australia. While living in Australia, Gwen taught English as a foreign language at a private language school and enjoyed the enviable Sydney lifestyle. She is currently taking a break from teaching to be a stay-at-home-mother to her son who was born in February. Gwen’s research interests include factors that influence the success of nonnative English speakers in American school systems as well as learning disabilities and their effects on the ESL population.

Contact: gwenandmark@comcast.net

Carolina de Los Rios

Carolina de Los Rios was born in Cali, Colombia where she received her B.A in Psychology at Javeriana University. In fall 1999, she moved to the Baltimore area to pursue her M.A. in Counseling Psychology in Towson University. At Towson, she obtained a Graduate Assistantship and for three years she was in charge of the Cross-Cultural Health Program within the Dowell Health Center. She assisted international students in their acculturation process. She also was dominated as the International Health Insurance Coordinator, serving as a liaison between international students and the health care system in the United States. During her Counseling Psychology studies, she did her internship at the Hispanic Apostolate in Baltimore, where she was responsible for providing counseling to a diverse Hispanic population. In Cali, Colombia, she worked for two years as a Psychologist in a school for special children, where she provided short term outpatient therapy for children with autism and other development disabilities, as well as educational consultation for teachers and parents. She was also a Lecturer at the Cooperativa University in Cali, Colombia where she delivered weekly lectures in evaluation techniques to psychology students. During her psychology studies in Colombia, Carolina participated for four years in an art therapy program designed for homeless children at a youth center. At present, Carolina is a Teaching Assistant in the Modern Languages Department, where she teaches Spanish. Carolina wants to work with children and women that have been displaced because of armed conflicts and poverty. Her research interests are in developing programs that will offer psychological and educational support and empowerment for those children and women that have been victims of violence. Also she is interested in exploring ways to help these people to recover their cultural identity that has been lost due to struggle and conflict.

Contact: cdelosr1@umbc.edu

Mamadou Salif Diallo

Mamadou Salif Diallo is a teacher trainer from Senegal who is studying at UMBC on a Fulbright assistantship. He received his BA in English at the University of Dakar, Senegal and his high school teaching certificate at the Ecole Normale Superieure (teacher training college) where he has been training prospective English teachers since 2000, after serving two years in the office of Technical High School Education in the Senegalese Ministry of Education. He also received the Franco British Chamber of Commerce and Industry Diploma at the British Senegalese Institute (BSI) and, on an Overseas Development Agency scholarship, the MEd in Teaching English in Specific Purposes (TESP) at the University of Exeter in Great Britain. Before his appointment to the Department of Education, Salif taught in various high schools throughout Senegal, where he often served as an English Club supervisor. He has also taught part time and designed ESP syllabi at both the BSI and the American English Language Program (AELP). He has also taught part time at the Institute of Applied Foreign Languages. He took an active part in designing the new national syllabus for English for Senegalese technical high schools, and in the First West Africa English Language Seminar in Dakar where he presented A Simulated ESP Syllabus Design. Last summer, Salif visited the United States with nine other AELP teachers, on a program sponsored by the State Department. This is when he discovered UMBC and decided he wanted to enroll here for his Ph.D. Because the teaching of ESP is not much developed in higher education in Senegal, despite the growing demand for it, Salif’s dissertation research will involve a survey and evaluation of various national ESP program models and lead to the design and pilot of a program for Senegal. He is looking forward, then, going back and implementing this program.

Contact: amsakh@yahoo.com; diallom1@umbc.edu

Top

Ryan Monroe

Ryan Monroe is from Newport News, Virginia. Although his first degree was a BS in Geology from the College of William and Mary, since that time, he has worked in a wide range of educational contexts, teaching adult literacy, ESL, and bilingual education, and also working as an administrator and teacher educator in these fields. He received his MA in Instructional Systems Development from UMBC, with a major in ESOL/Bilingual in 1984, and then spent the next three years in Honduras, where he worked in adult literacy. As a result of that work, two of his literacy textbooks were published by the Honduran Ministry of Education: Cartilla de alfabetizaction Garifuna and Alfabetizacion Garifuna: Guia del maestro. After leaving Honduras, Ryan taught ESL and bilingual science at the secondary level for eleven years in a variety of locations including Maryland, Washington, DC, and Northern California. While in California, he graduated from the Bilingual Instructional Leadership Training Program at California State University in Sacramento. Ryan’s teaching is highlighted in Portraits of Teachers in Multicultural Settings: A Critical Literacy Approach edited by Lettie Ramirez and Olivia Gallardo (Allyn and Bacon, 1999). He also contributed a short story, “El maestro tonto” for a collection, Erase que sera, edited by Alma Flor Ada and published by Harcourt-Brace in 1997. In addition to his work in bilingual education, Ryan has wide experience in the area of training educational personnel to make schools safe for gay and lesbian youth. One of his publications, “Laws and Court Cases Relating to Sexual Orientation and Schools” is published in Inclusive Curriculum: The Silent Minority Comes to the Classroom (The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network of Los Angeles,1998). Ryan is currently coordinator of Bilingual Education: Training for All Teachers at McDaniel College in Westminster, MD, where he is developing a Master’s level training program for educators who work with language minority students in US public schools. Ryan’s research interests are in teacher education, critical pedagogy, language rights and bilingual education.

Contact: ryan_monroe@hotmail.com

Kelly Moore

Kelly Moore began her professional career at the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC), Eastern Boulevard Extension Center, as a Retention Specialist and Job Developer with the College’s Job Network Program, an initiative focused on transitioning public assistance recipients to employment, and later became a Career Development Counselor and Student Employment Specialist. At present, she is a College Employment Search Specialist on the Catonsville Campus of CCBC and also Transfer Coordinator for Project SPARK, a federally funded TRIO Student Support Services Program, which assists first generation, low-income, and/or disabled students to successfully complete Associates degrees and transition to baccalaureate institutions or employment. In education, she is an adjunct instructor, teaching the Career and Life Planning course within Project SPARK’s Learning Community which she designed in conjunction with the Program Director. A native Baltimorean, Kelly received a Bachelor of Science in Sociology and a Master of Arts in Liberal and Professional Studies, with a concentration in Career Counseling and Management, from Towson University. For her Master’s, Kelly did research on welfare reform and diversity in higher education, as each relates to non-traditional female college students transitioning from public assistance to employment via community college education and then designed a proposal for a Career Development Program for this population. She also completed a specialized welfare-to-work training program, “Winning New Jobs” at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. As a student in the LLC Doctoral Program, Kelly intends to conduct research on the correlation between the socioeconomic status of first generation and non-traditional African-American community college students and their degree of cultural and self-awareness, tolerance, and sensitivity, as well as social adaptation, as these relate to the achievement and retention rates in higher education and subsequent employment. Kelly is interested in using the theories of W.E.B. DuBois and Ervin Goffman to develop a multidisciplinary approach to curriculum design, which will prepare these students for success in culturally diverse learning environments and workplaces.

Contact: kmoore1@umbc.edu

Vered Nusinov

Growing up in a culturally rich home, Vered has always been interested in the study of customs, cultures, and languages. Her parents emigrated from Israel to the United States when Vered was just eight months old. Her environment, therefore, was enriched from both the inside and outside. Inside, Vered learned to speak fluent Hebrew, practiced the traditions of her religion, and developed a deep love and passion for her homeland, the State of Israel. Outside, Vered learned to speak fluent English, interacted with people of diverse backgrounds, and acclimated to her second home, the United States. Today, as a dual-citizen, Vered enjoys living in the United States and frequently visiting her friends and relatives in Israel. Vered received her B.A. in English Language and Literature, with a concentration in British and American Literature and graduated summa cum laude from the Honors Program at the University of Maryland at College Park in the spring of 1998. During her junior year, Vered participated in a study abroad program at Tel-Aviv University where she collected and analyzed data for her Honors Thesis. Vered spent time visiting English classrooms in Israeli schools as a means of studying foreign language instruction from a new perspective. Following her graduation, Vered continued her studies at UMBC where she became a Maryland certified secondary education English teacher and received her Master’s degree in Instructional Systems Development. Currently, Vered teaches middle school English in a private school where she has been working for five years. She has also served in the capacity of sixth grade Language Arts Coordinator and tutors middle and high school students in writing. While pursuing her Doctorate in the LLC program, Vered looks forward to furthering her studies in language and education.

Contact: veredtn@hotmail.com

Top

Cohort 6

Juanite Ashby-Bey

Juanita is a first generation college student who is proud to say that she was born and raised in Baltimore City. She attributes her academic success to her strength and drive to work hard to reach her goals. She is also very active in her religious organization, The Moorish Science Temple of America, where she has adopted her true race as Asiatic. Juanita began her post-secondary education at Baltimore City Community College and has continued to work through the ranks of higher education. After obtaining her Associate of Science Degree in General Studies from BCCC in 1997, she transferred to Coppin State College where she received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Elementary Education. Juanita graduated Summa Cum Laude from Coppin State in 2000 as a Ronald E. McNair Scholar and Student Teacher of the Year. After graduating from Coppin, she began a Master’s Degree Program at Johns Hopkins University in June 2000. Simultaneously, she was hired as a fourth grade teacher in the Baltimore City School System, where she spent the most memorable and rewarding years of her career thus far. After obtaining a Master’s Degree in Educational Technology and resigning from the BCPPS, she decided to a take short break from school. At the same time, she began her career as an instructor at Coppin State College in the Division of Education where she is currently training students who will become teachers. Juanita is also a wife and a mother of three and hopes that she is serving as a sufficient role model for her children. She is very appreciative and thankful for her family’s time and patience as she takes on this new challenge to complete her goals in education through the LLC Program. In the LLC Program, Juanita plans to research the gender gap in student performance in the areas of mathematics and science, particularly with African American students.

Contact: JAshby-Bey@coppin.edu

Supamit Chanseawrassamee

Supamit obtained her Bachelor’s degree in English from Chulalongkorn University (CU) in Bangkok, Thailand and her Master’s degree in Language and Communication from the National Institute of Development and Administration (NIDA) in Thailand. During her study at NIDA, she was awarded a scholarship by the Thai Ministry of University Affairs to attend Penn State University for one semester. Following this, she was awarded a full scholarship to pursue her doctoral degree by her employer, TOT Corporation Public Company Limited (TOT), formerly the Telephone Organization of Thailand, where she has been working for the past 18 years. Throughout this time, she has been assisting her colleagues in their pursuit of higher degrees by tutoring them for their English examinations. Her concern for her colleagues’ English proficiency was instrumental in her boss’s decision to send her abroad to pursue her Ph.D. in LLC. Her main mission after completing her doctoral studies is to develop placement tests and courses appropriate for TOT employees including TOEFL preparation courses, and courses in reading and writing in English. The special interdisciplinary approach to the LLC Doctoral Program provided by UMBC was the main factor that convinced her boss to send her to study here. TOT executives believe that this program can provide Supamit with knowledge in various topics, such as multicultural communication, linguistics, principles of training and education, computer-based training, and social and organizational interactions, which can be applied to her job. In addition, TOT views the LLC internship as a good chance for Supamit to have experience working abroad. Apart from developing new curricula for TOT employees’ English literacy, Supamit looks forward to applying her knowledge learned here in order to enhance her sons’ English education as well.

Contact: chan6@umbc.edu

Asli Hassan

Asli, originally from Somalia, East Africa, speaks Somali, Italian, English and some Arabic. She acquired Italian (her second language) as a child and English as a young adult. She has a Bachelor's degree in English with a minor in History from Marshall University and a Master's degree in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) from University of Findlay. She has over fifteen years of experience teaching English as a Second Language in the United States and in Saudi Arabia. In the U.S., Asli has been working as an ESL Instructor at Marshall University since 1994. She also has seven years of experience as a consultant and ESL Specialist for Cabell County, West Virginia in the K-12 ESL program. Her work includes coordination of the Marshall University Summer School for K-12 Limited English Proficient students and parents (1997-99), a program that provided language and content instruction to the students and parents as well as teacher training opportunities for mainstream teachers. Asli currently serves as the Vice-president of West Virginia, TESOL, and the Co-Chair of the Refugee Concerns Interest Section of TESOL International. As a Southern Regional Educational Board (SREB) doctoral scholar, Asli will research ways to improve the literacy level of language minority students (K-12 to adults). In addition, she would like to study the use of a variety of delivery methods that will complement traditional ESOL curricula, such as Web-based methods which can be used in various instructional settings – classrooms, distance-learning sites, and self-study situations. Asli is currently teaching a TESOL course by distance and plans to develop a graduate TESOL program which can be delivered by distance.

Contact: asli1@umbc.edu

Top

Datta Kaur Khalsa

Interest in the education of children started early for Datta Kaur, having been born the oldest of ten children. She started out in the field of Speech Pathology, teaching migrant workers' children as well as autistic and emotionally disturbed children for seven years in the public school system. Realizing that there was more to education than what the public school system offered, she began to travel and helped with curriculum development in various schools across the U.S., such as Montessori Schools and a Navajo Reservation school. With the help of Kundalini yoga, which she has taught and practiced daily for the past twenty-eight years, Datta Kaur home schooled her three children and created a summer camp, where children of all ages could eat vegetarian, practice yoga, and experience outdoor activities. Later Datta Kaur worked in a different capacity by organizing weekly free food distribution programs with meals prepared and served by children in an urban center until she was approached to become a corporate trainer. It was in the world of business where she began to realize the power of technology, and she immersed herself in this field in which she conducted up to five interactive teleconferences a week with up to 150 people on each call, developed training materials, and published a book. To stay on the 'cutting edge' of what was available for change and efficiency, Datta Kaur completed an M.Ed. in Online Teaching and Learning at California State University Hayward. With more knowledge and understanding about global education and what technology can offer, she obtained a grant and became co-founder of an online media source in January 2000, which unites volunteer readers and writers and uses the technology for education while broadening the choices in communication related to local and national news. As one of the older of the 'net-geners', Datta Kaur can be found designing curricula and teaching online graduate courses in education while she expands her research here at UMBC in the LLC Doctoral Program with a focus on the power and impact of online learning communities, small and large, national and international.

Contact: dkhalsa1@umbc.edu; dattakaurk@aol.com

Yonghun Lee

After being admitted to Chonbuk National University, Yonghun chose anthropology as his major because of his interest in cultures and people around the world. In his third semester at Chonbuk National University, he attended a Culture and Politics class that convinced Yonghun that his true calling was in Cultural Studies. To gain more knowledge in this field, he actively pursued his interest in anthropological fieldwork through various research experiences, including a position as assistant researcher in the National Museum in Chonju City. During this experience Yonghun developed his understanding of the manipulation of culture, especially with regard to the cultural institutions in Korea. Yonghun, who speaks Japanese and English as well as Korean, decided to study abroad in order to gain new perspectives on the management of cultural institutions. He received a Master’s degree in Museum Studies at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, which provided much practical preparation and professional knowledge of museums and cultural institutions and how they help to shape people’s view of their culture and themselves. After graduating from University of Nebraska, Yonghun continued his studies through an internship program at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. In the LLC Doctoral Program, Yonghun looks forward to studying further the manipulation of cultural elements in modern societies. He would also like to expand his knowledge of culture further by examining the differences and similarities among Korean, Japanese, and Chinese cultures and how these neighboring cultures affect one another within the context of various cultural institutions. In addition to his studies in the LLC Program, Yonghun also enjoys teaching Korean here at UMBC.

Contact: LYH0416@hotmail.com

Mark Parker

Mark comes to the LLC Program from our sister institution, University of Maryland University College (UMUC), where he is Executive Assistant to the Provost and an adjunct faculty member teaching expository writing. UMUC is now one of the largest providers of online higher education in the world, so in addition to teaching online Mark is involved in many of the initiatives related to online pedagogy that are underway at UMUC. He advises and assists the Provost in a variety of aspects of “the virtual university” and serves on committees dealing with such issues as outcomes assessment, student success and retention, and shared governance in the online environment. Mark received his B.A. in Russian and his M.A. in Slavic Studies from Florida State University. While conducting the research for his M.A. thesis, which examined how speakers of Russian adapt foreign verbs into their grammatical/syntactic system, Mark became fascinated by the challenges that Russian graduate students were facing in U.S. higher education settings. He was particularly interested in their struggles with American academic English and with the expectations for reading and writing proficiency in U.S. graduate school courses. This interest was renewed in 1997 when Mark joined UMUC as it was beginning to experience the astonishing growth in demand for fully online courses and degree programs that continues to this day. In his research here at UMBC, Mark intends to focus on the challenges faced by speakers of other languages when participating in fully online U.S. graduate courses. Specifically, he would like to design and test interventions, in the form of short online courses or workshops, to prepare speakers of other languages for the writing and discourse demands of online graduate study at a U.S. institution. It is his hope that these and similar interventions will help UMUC in its goal of ensuring that all incoming graduate students, regardless of their nations of origin or undergraduate education, will have the writing and discourse skills necessary to succeed in their chosen graduate degree programs.

Contact: mparker@umuc.edu

Joan Shin

Joan, a native Baltimorean of Korean ethnicity, received a B.A. in Economics from Cornell University in 1993 after which she gained her first taste of cross-cultural experience working for a Korean trading company in New York City. Her interest in cross-cultural communication continued and her love for teaching was ignited through her experience as an ESL teaching assistant in Howard County and as a volunteer ESL teacher for Hispanic adults a few years later. After these challenging yet rewarding experiences teaching, Joan went back to school and received an M.A. from UMBC in Instructional Systems Development (ESOL/Bilingual track) in 1999 while working as a teaching assistant at University of Maryland English Institute at UMCP. Upon graduating from UMBC, Joan went back to her parents’ native country, Korea, and worked as an ESL teacher for one year at Seoul Foreign School. The next year Joan remained in Korea and connected with her UMBC roots by accepting a teaching position at Sookmyung Women’s University TESOL Program (SMU-TESOL), where she worked under the direction of JoAnn Crandall (LLC Program Director) and Ronald Schwartz (Co-director, ESOL/Bilingual Program). Committed to training Korean EFL teachers and building a successful cross-cultural community of learning, Joan spent four years at SMU-TESOL serving as a Methodology and Intercultural Communication instructor as well as the Course Coordinator of their graduate level TESOL certification program for her last two years. Joan’s five-year stay in Korea as well as her experience traveling to many different countries in Asia and Europe built her awareness of the emergence of English as a powerful tool for economic and social advancement around the world. Her interest in the growth of English as an international language and the cultural implications of this phenomenon led her to seek further opportunities to study the interplay between language and culture in the LLC Program. Now back in the U.S., Joan hopes to reacquaint herself with the American side of her identity and search for ways, through the LLC Program, to create effective instructional systems, in the classroom as well as in community settings, both here and abroad for the promotion of intercultural sensitivity and understanding.

Contact: jshin2@umbc.edu

Top

Brian Souders

Brian’s research interests focus on identity issues in returned study abroad students, specifically how an international education experience affects the returnee’s sense of national identity toward his or her home country. This interest is not only a professional one, but also a personal one as he is still working on this issue more than two decades after his first international experience as a high school exchange student in Finland. He enjoyed the first year in Finland so much that he studied at the University of Helsinki with the help of a scholarship from Finland’s Ministry of Education. He also participated in two intensive summer language programs in Moscow, Russia and was a research fellow at the Estonian Institute for International and Social Studies in Tallinn, Estonia. Brian comes to the LLC program with a Master’s degree in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with a concentration in Soviet and post-Soviet domestic politics. His earlier research focused on the politics of national identity in the former USSR and in the Baltic States, with a focus on Estonian citizenship policies. His interest in Soviet nationality issues was inspired during an undergraduate seminar at Indiana University, where he earned a B.A. in Political Science and Slavic Languages and Cultures. He has presented his research on the ethnic dynamic in Estonian parliamentary elections at the American Political Science Association, and has also co-authored articles on Soviet-East European relations, Soviet nationality policies and the politics of economic reform in the former Soviet Union. Brian is currently UMBC’s Coordinator of Study Abroad, a position he has held for the past three years. He previously worked as Assistant Director of Study Abroad at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he managed the UIUC exchange programs in the United Kingdom and Australia, and advised students studying in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. When not promoting international education opportunities for UMBC students, Brian is an avid runner who competes regularly in half and full marathons, most recently in Ottawa, Helsinki and Washington.

Contact: souders@umbc.edu

Donna Taylor

Donna received her B.A. from UMBC in Psychology as well as an M.A. in Liberal Studies from the College of Notre Dame. She has over 20 years of experience in education and training within K-12, higher education, and industry. At UMBC, she served as the ISD Training and Development Graduate Program Co-Director from 1994 to 2001 and is currently the Program Director. She has played an integral role in the start-up and management of several high profile academic programs, including the online M.S. in Information Systems, online M.S. in Emergency Health Services Management, ISD Training and Development post-baccalaureate certificate programs, undergraduate programs at the USM Shady Grove Center in Rockville, MD, Summer and Winter Sessions, and the Experienced Teacher Professional Development programs. She has served on the University System of Maryland's Shady Grove Center Academic Planning Advisory Council, the Board of Directors for MarylandOnline, Inc., UMBC’s Delta Initiative Steering Committee, and the UMBC Enrollment Management Task Force. Professional memberships include: University Continuing Education Association, American Society of Training and Development, and Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications. While working on her Ph.D., Donna serves as the Assistant Chair in the UMBC Department of Education where she is helping the Department prepare for its NCATE re-accreditation visit scheduled for fall 2004. She is also involved in the Department of Education’s outreach efforts with area schools, particularly with the Professional Development School partnerships. In addition, she manages the Department’s scholarship programs, including the prestigious Sherman Family Teacher Education Scholars Program. Donna’s research interests include school and organizational collaborations, teachers’ construction of identity, teaching as a professional community of practice and reflective practice in teaching. She intends to focus on the role of technology in relation to one or several of these areas.

Contact: dotaylor@umbc.edu

Top

Cohort 7

Elizabeth Arevalo-Guerrero

Originally from Marbella in the south of Spain, Elisabeth arrived in the US in 2001 as a Fulbright scholar and Alpha Delta Kappa ITE (International Teacher Educator) grantee to do her M.A. in Intercultural Communication at UMBC. Her MA thesis focused on “The role of the International Student Adviser as intercultural communicator: A descriptive study of the position and relationship of the ISA and international students.” Elisabeth holds a five-year degree in English with a minor in Spanish from the University of Malaga, Spain. She was head of the Spanish department for three years at Calpe College International School where she had the opportunity to experience the importance and challenges of multicultural education. She decided to learn other languages and cultures to better understand and teach her international students. Upon completion of her M.A. and as part of her practical training, Elisabeth was an instructor of major courses in Spanish at the MLL department, academic and international adviser, and instructor of intercultural communication at the English Language Center (UMBC). She enjoys working with international students and teachers of other languages. While in the US, Elisabeth has attended numerous conferences (SIETAR, TESOL, NAFSA) and participated in various workshops as part of developing her professional career as intercultural trainer and international educator and adviser, leading to her decision to enrol in the LLC Ph.D. Program. Her research interest is in the field of multicultural education, particularly in the use of emotional intelligence to enhance cultural diversity awareness in the multicultural classroom and to help prevent cross-cultural conflicts.

Contact: eliarev1@umbc.edu

Helen Atkinson

Helen has helped to start a series of different programs over the past 20 years, ranging from a Homesharing Program to match elderly homeowners with homeless students and immigrants to a neighborhood family support center for teenage mothers. She moved from health care and community organizing into the field of education 13 years ago when she started a program to recruit, select, train and support new teachers in the Baltimore City Public School System—the Resident Teacher Program. After this experience, she was asked to be in charge of mentoring new teachers across the school system. Her efforts were concentrated on full-time mentors who were working to not only support new teachers in their building, but also change the culture of collaboration amongst adults at the schools being served. Helen has also been involved in the start up of three small schools—the Stadium School, the Connexions Leadership Academy and, this year, the Community Learning for Life Program. All three schools are public schools serving low-income Baltimore City students and all three are still running with success. Recently, she became a teacher in an alternative high school program, serving children who have already dropped out or are about to drop out of school. While working as a life coach and academic mentor for 12 students, she and two other teachers are designing the program from scratch and performing all the administrative duties. The program represents a culmination of her work in communities, in schools and in the field of experiential learning. She attributes her commitment to constructivist, experiential education to her parents in England who raised 5 children with a constant exposure to learning in the wild--on buses, on trains, on walks, in woods, in community work and through books. Her interest in the LLC Program stems from her commitment to understanding how students, families and the community can come together in schools to create a place where learning occurs through interest and the strengths that students and their families bring to the table.

Contact: HAtkinson@bcps.k12.md.us

Cherisse Lewin Carlin

Cherisse was born in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, where her parents still reside. She came to the United States and to UMBC in 1993 in pursuit of her undergraduate degree in Biological Science. She continued her studies at UMBC in a very different field, receiving an M.A. in ISD, with a concentration in ESOL/ Bilingual Education, and also becoming a certified K-12 ESOL teacher in Maryland. While working on her Master’s Degree, she had a Graduate Assistantship in the Office of Multicultural Affairs, where she was the liaison for seven on-campus student organizations and designed events to preserve and promote diversity in the campus community. During her years at UMBC, she has completed a research internship at the University of Maryland Medical School; been a Fogarty Minority Scholar participant in Rotterdam, Holland; and taught ESOL in South Korea. She has also been a member of her church choir, praise and worship leader, and a Sunday school teacher, and was promoted to Director of the Children’s Department. For the past three years, Cherisse has been a financial aid counselor at Howard Community College, where she focuses on helping immigrants/New Americans with the financial aid process. She acts as an advocate for students and serves as a resource in finding them much needed funding for their education. She also provides workshops for the staff of financial aid and the directors of student services and academic departments on working effectively with diverse students. Cherisse is the first of her nine sisters (four biological and five adopted) to pursue a doctoral degree. Her research interests take her back to Trinidad and Tobago, where she will examine the role of language in preserving people’s identity and culture. She wants to someday use what she has learned to advise the United Nations on policy that will protect countries they aid from language, identity and culture death.

Contact: cherc@umbc.edu

Top

Alfreda Dudley-Sponaugle

Alfreda is a Lecturer in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at Towson University, where she teaches the computer ethics and information technology courses. The focus of her research is on technology, ethics and culture. She is interested in how ethics is or is not applied in technological cultures and how students in computer science and information systems perceive computer ethics courses, which could be the basis of the application of ethics in their professions. At Towson, she is involved in a number of activities, including serving as Co-Advisor to the National Black Science and Engineering Chapter and a member of the Institutional Research Board. She is also a member of the Business and Education Steering Committee on an NSF grant awarded to CCBC-Essex concerned with increasing the number of women in computer fields. Alfreda also has presented at a number of conferences, including the 2004 10th Annual Towson Multicultural Conference: Defining Dimensions of Diversity; the 2004 USM Faculty Conference: Teaching Diversity/Thinking Diversity; the 2003 Annual Fall Business Ethics Day at CCBC-Essex Campus; and the 2002 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society. She has a number of publications (in journals, books, and conference proceedings). Some of these are:

• Improving Web Accessibility: A Study of Webmaster Perceptions (J. Lazar and K. Greenidge, co-authors)
• Accelerating Testing on ICU Control Systems Software using Slicing Techniques (G. Trajkovski, co-author)
• The Ethical Implications of Web Accessibility for Users with Disabilities (J. Lazar, co-author)
• Preparing to Teach Ethics in a Computer Science Curriculum (D. Lidtke, co-author)

Contact: adudley@towson.edu

Jermaine Anthony Ellerbe

Desiring to be an educator since the age of five, Jermaine has pursued every opportunity in order to make his dream a reality. After having been conferred degrees from two HBCU's (Coppin and Howard), he began his teaching career with Baltimore County Public Schools. As a sixth grade World Cultures teacher, Jermaine introduces his students to our diverse world using best teaching practices. Because of his innovative use of integrating technology into the curriculum, the Baltimore County Chamber of Commerce awarded him the honor, Baltimore County Middle School Teacher of the Year (2003). Last year, he earned the distinction of being National Board Certified in the area of Early Adolescence-Social Studies/History. Throughout his seven years of cultivating young minds, Jermaine has had the privilege of being in what he believes are some of the best schools in the system, such as Dundalk Middle, Sudbrook Magnet Middle, and currently, Deer Park Middle Magnet. After completing the LLC Program, he plans to open his own educational consulting firm assisting non-traditional students who seek assistance in entering the teaching profession. In addition, Jermaine wishes to use his knowledge from the LLC program to work in either the BCPS’s Office of Equity and Assurance or the Office of Magnet Education. His research interests include school reform and comparative education. His dissertation will focus on a longitudinal study of the effect of magnet school programs on bridging the achievement for African-American middle school males in the Baltimore County Public School System.

Contact: jellerbe@bcps.org

Top

Tracy Irish

Tracy is currently employed at the Maryland State Department of Education, where she is a program approval specialist in the Division of Certification and Accreditation. She works with the institutions of higher education that offer teacher preparation programs. Previous to her work at the state department, Tracy worked as lead teacher in the Biotechnology cluster of a Technology Magnet Program. Prior to her career change into education, she worked as a research specialist in various areas in molecular and cellular biology such as vaccine development, cancer studies, and general bacteriology. Tracy received her B.A. from Southern Illinois University in Biological Sciences and her M.A.degree from UMBC in the Instructional Systems Design Program, which also lead to her teacher certification in science. Tracy’s research interests combine her experiences as a scientist, a science educator, and now a specialist at MSDE. She plans to focus on effective statewide science reform to include the participation of both scientists and science educators. She hopes that her research in the LLC Ph.D. Program can assist Maryland in developing and implementing a successful science reform movement where all stakeholders can work together for student achievement throughout grades K-16.

Contact: tirish1@umbc.edu; tirish@comcast.net

Dianne McElroy

Dianne holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology (Summa Cum Laude) and a Master of Arts degree in Applied Sociology (Summa Cum Laude) from UMBC. As an undergraduate student she was a recipient of the UMBC Undergraduate Provost Research Award and received full funding to support a study of her own design entitled, Disaster Prevention and Preparedness, An International Comparative Study. This opportunity enabled her to conduct international field research within various locations of Switzerland and ignited a personal and professional interest in cultural issues within a global framework and economy. Dianne is employed at Westat, a research corporation where she works in the Mental and Behavioral Health group as a research analyst. She is participating in the development of a knowledge application plan for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), to improve service delivery to people who are homeless and have a mental illness or co-occurring disorder. This work includes conducting qualitative research in two states (Seattle, WA and Philadelphia, PA) in order to study effective programs and partnerships and the role they play in offering social services and resources to those who are homeless and have mental illnesses or co-occurring disorders. Dianne’s interest in the LLC Doctoral Program is focused on Language, Culture and Power in Organizations and Communities with an emphasis on cultural dynamics that impact mental and behavioral health, nationally and internationally. Her goal is to continue her research in mental and behavioral health and to promote science to service applications through effective policy change.

Contact: DianneMcElroy@westat.com; o.d.mcelroy@att.net

Jiraporn Meechai

Jiraporn is a Royal Thai Government scholarship student. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Khon Kaen University in Thailand. After teaching for three years, she decided to further her study and enrolled in King Mongkut’s University of Technology in Thonburi, Thailand, where she earned a Master of Arts degree. Her M.A. thesis was on “Factors Affecting Mismatches between Learners’ Productive Participation and their Language Achievement.” Six months after finishing her M.A., she received the scholarship from the Thai government to enable her to continue her education in the U.S. With that scholarship, she enrolled in the M.A. Program in Intercultural Communication, receiving her second Master’s degree in the summer of 2004. A native speaker of Isan, a minority language in Thailand, Jiraporn decided to focus on the status of her language, as well as Thai, in her M.A. scholarly paper. Its title was “National and Minority Languages in Thailand: A Case Study of Thai and Isan.” Jiraporn’s main interests in the LLC Program are in English language teaching, sociolinguistics, cross-cultural communication, and pragmatics.

Contact: jiram1@umbc.edu

Top

Cohort 8

George M. Chinnery

George received a Master of Arts degree in ESOL/Bilingual Education from UMBC in the spring of 2005. Presently, he is teaching English for Academic Purposes at UMBC and ESL citizenship class at the Carlos Rosario International School in Washington, DC, as well as working as a Graduate Assistant in the Language, Literacy and Culture program. George’s previous education includes a Master of Social Work from University of Maryland Baltimore and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from University of Maryland, College Park. He worked for the Department of Human Services of the District of Columbia for several years after completing his first Master’s degree. In 1998, he became a US Peace Corps volunteer in Romania where he taught social work, psychology and sociology to college students as well as English to adults and teenagers. He also served as a consultant for governmental and non-governmental organizations on program and resource development, coordinated and participated in various trainings, and edited the volunteer newsletter. Upon his return to the US in 2000, feeling somewhat more technically challenged than he had before the Peace Corps, George completed a certification program in web development and Internet technologies. He also obtained employment teaching English as a second language and computer-assisted language learning in the District of Columbia, during which time he was accepted into UMBC’s graduate TESOL program. George sees the Language, Literacy and Culture program as a natural extension of his previous experience and education. His research interests include technology-enhanced language learning, computer-mediated communication in language learning, mobile-assisted language learning, online language learning and teacher training as well as the global digital divide. He is also interested in language preservation and cultural diversity on the Internet, and the effects of technology on the cultural adaptation (culture and reentry shock) of Peace Corps volunteers. After obtaining his PhD, George plans to continue working in education focused on aspects of culture and technology.

Contact: geo2@umbc.edu

Eunju Chung

Eunju was born in South Korea and came to the U.S. with her family when she was 7. Living in a bilingual, multicultural context, she was happy to discover in college two areas of study which gave her a framework to articulate her everyday concerns: Cultural Anthropology and Political Science. These areas of study seem to perceive the world from two opposing directions, Anthropology often advocating for the powerless and Political Science focusing on the dynamic of power and influence. Eunju received her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College in 1992. In 1993, Eunju enrolled in the Master’s Program for ESOL/Bilingual Education at UMBC, receiving her M.A. in 1998. She began teaching while still a student in the program. During her years of teaching in Baltimore County and Baltimore City, she taught grades K-12 and in the summers participated in the Johns Hopkins’ Intensive English Program. She then worked with ESL departments on the local and state levels in the U.S. through a software company. Currently, she is working for a Christian non-profit organization involved in cross-cultural ministry. What seemed to have been a step outside of her field has actually led her back to UMBC, to the LLC Program where she will continue to explore the dynamics of cross-cultural communication. Eunju is interested in education, diverse communities, and the globalization of Christian ministries, all of which seem to converge at communication across ethnic, socio-economic, linguistic, and cultural borders.

Contact: eunju@awm.org

David Hoffman

David is Coordinator for Leadership and Engagement Initiatives in UMBC’s Office of Student Life. His work involves creating opportunities for UMBC undergraduates to experience personal and civic agency as “citizens” of the campus and co-creators of the university community. He is a staff advisor to the Student Government Association and First Year Council, and coordinates UMBC’s participation in the American Democracy Project, a national civic engagement initiative. Prior to arriving at UMBC in 2003, David founded and led Create the Commonwealth, a nonprofit research and consulting organization helping public agencies organize and inspire their “clients” to become creative partners and problem-solvers. He was a founding member of the San Diego City Schools Parent-Teacher-Community Collaborative, and helped the school district develop and implement creative new strategies for engaging parents in their children’s education. Previously he had served as Chief of Staff and Vice President for Research, Development and Communications at the Consensus Organizing Institute, a national nonprofit that organizes residents of low-income communities to address social and economic concerns; and as a corporate litigation attorney. He received a B.A. in Economics from UCLA, an M.P.P. from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and a J.D. from the Harvard Law School. In the LLC program, David is pursuing his longstanding interest in exploring the relationship between personal and social transformations. His hope is to develop models for promoting a profound sense of civic agency, ownership and empowerment among college students, and to raise campuses’ ambitions, standards and strategic effectiveness at inspiring students’ civic engagement.

Contact:dhoffman@umbc.edu

Top

Susan Mrozowski

As an instructional designer at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Susan is involved in the development and implementation of multimedia learning environments that supplement the traditional medical school curriculum. Her mission is to explore the design and use of visually rich digital media for communication and learning. Susan’s early adult life is defined by hours spent studying Chinese and living in Asia. She majored in East Asian Studies at Oberlin College, graduating in 1981. During her junior year, as a participant in the Yale-in-China program, she spent a year immersed in Chinese culture and language at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The year was 1979, the moment in history when the United States and China re-established diplomatic relations, and Susan was able to enter the People’s Republic of China as part of a student delegation, witnessing a society as it emerged from self-imposed isolation after the Cultural Revolution, and before it was affected by outside cultural and economic influences. From 1982-1984 Susan lived in Taipei as a Chinese language student and taught English as Second Language. In 1986, she was invited to set up and direct an ESL program at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in the Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics, located at the edge of the Gobi Desert in northwest China. During that year, when not teaching her students, Susan studied the art of the Silk Road and the history of ancient Chinese Central Asia. In 1991, Susan received her M.P.A. degree in arts administration from the University of Washington and worked with local government agencies to implement public arts policy. She moved to Baltimore in 1993 to work at the Johns Hopkins University. In 1999, she earned an M.A. from UMBC in instructional design, with a concentration in distance education. Over the past eight years, she has worked in the field of online learning. Susan has created and taught several Johns Hopkins University undergraduate and graduate level communication courses. Twenty years ago, Susan’s goal was to decipher the meaning of a written language composed of pictograms and a spoken language governed by tones. This interest has metamorphosed into a fascination with the cognitive and aesthetic elements that transform learning as mediated by multimedia technologies. Today, as a doctoral student in the LLC program, Susan will concentrate on the language of visual design, computer-mediated visual representation of ideas, multimodal discourse, and visual literacy.

Contact: smrozo1@umbc.edu

Dana Polson

Dana Polson helped plan and now is the Co-Director of ConneXions Community Leadership Academy, a Baltimore City public middle school serving 120 students in grades 6-8 as part of the New Schools Initiative of BCPSS. ConneXions is a teacher-led school in which teachers collectively make school-wide policies and decisions. It has a rich electives program including African Drum and Dance, Martial Arts, Spanish, and Art. As Co-Director of ConneXions, Dana is working to develop a school-wide portfolio program. She also coordinates the teacher professional development program; oversees the school’s budget, technology, and maintenance needs; and responds to requests for data from BCPSS headquarters. After graduating from the University of Virginia with a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies focusing on music and history, she completed an MA in Music at UVA. She then attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, studying viola performance with John Graham, and received a Master of Music degree there in 1993. She worked in music administration at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music for two years, teaching and freelancing in the Southern New Hampshire Area. She also took graduate classes in education at the College of Notre Dame through the Resident Teacher Program, an alternative certification program for career-changers, and currently holds an Advanced Professional Teaching Certificate. Prior to her work at ConneXions, Dana taught US History and Law at Carver Vocational Technical High School, a Baltimore City Public High School, and coached the Policy Debate Team. Dana’s research emerges from her work with ConneXions and in Baltimore City schools where many students, despite clearly displayed intelligence, are not achieving up to their potential in school. She is interested in identity in the role of African American children’s education, the effects of poverty on learning and how home and school discourses can collide in schools.

Contact: danapolson@verizon.net

Adriana Val

Adriana, a native of Argentina, earned her first degree in History and Education, with a certification to teach in high schools and colleges in her native country. Her research for her degree of Profesora de Historia was about the political campaign of Julio A. Roca in 1880. By the time she earned her first degree, Adriana had already taught for several years in schools in Buenos Aires, as well as participated in literacy projects for illiterate adults. Adriana moved to the US with her husband and four children. Her interest in continuing her education led her to study at UMBC’s English Language Center in 1999 and apply to the MA program in Intercultural Communication (INCC). She recently finished her MA in INCC at UMBC with research on online writings of heritage speakers of Spanish. At UMBC, she has taught Spanish, developed online courses, and assisted with online course development for the English Language Center’s E-Teacher Program. She has also designed and taught Spanish courses for the National Labor College. In addition, working with the Center for Applied Linguistics, she has been a research assistant involved in a database collection of heritage language programs in the United States. In the LLC Program, Adriana would like to continue her research on heritage Spanish learners and issues of language maintenance, bilingualism, and identity among Hispanic students in online courses in higher education, investigating their voices through their writing.

Contact: aval1@umbc.edu

Alliscia Wharton

Alliscia joined the UMBC family as an undergraduate student in 1998, where she majored in Spanish and German. During her undergraduate career, Alliscia was selected as a Humanities Scholar and enjoyed membership in the Honors College, both of which afforded her the opportunity for a semester of study in Spain. After earning her B.A., she continued at UMBC with graduate work in the Applied and Professional Ethics program where she integrated professional opportunities with academic training in analysis and research. The result was successful completion of her M.A. in the Applied and Professional Ethics program. Throughout her undergraduate and graduate studies, Alliscia has worked for the federal government in several positions in the Social Security Administration. She started as a student clerk, providing service directly to the public and later moved to a processing units providing indirect support to the public. Upon graduating with her B.A., she became a bilingual social insurance specialist, once again supplying services, especially to non-English speaking members of the public. Alliscia currently works for the Social Security Administration but looks forward to exploring other opportunities within the agency. By working with such an economically, linguistically, and racially diverse population, Alliscia’s research interests lie in analyzing how these factors contribute to inequality and discrimination within the structure of the government agency, as well as the rules and regulations of policy formation and execution. She hopes that such research will reveal avenues to structural and policy reform.

Contact: allisciawharton@hotmail.com

Top

Cohort 9

Laura (Violeta) Colombo

Originally from Argentina, Violeta (as everybody calls Laura Colombo) joined the UMBC community in 2003. She obtained her Master’s in Intercultural Communication (INCC) in 2005, where she learned about the LLC Ph.D. program. Before coming to the U.S., Violeta earned her degree as an Elementary School teacher and completed her B.A. in Educational Sciences in Argentina. She taught English as a Foreign Language and Literature courses at elementary, middle, and high-school levels. She also coordinated creative writing workshops and participated in an independent literary magazine, Andrógina in Argentina. While pursuing her Master’s degree in INCC at UMBC, she focused her research on the differences in academic writing across cultures and compared academic writing in the U.S. and Argentina in her final scholarly paper. The INCC program offered Violeta the opportunity to broaden her academic knowledge, participate and present at conferences, and also to improve her professional skills as an educator. Working as a Spanish Teaching Assistant and Instructor at UMBC allowed her to discover explicit connections between second language learning theories and their application to the foreign language classroom. She collaborated in the design of writing activities used in Elementary and Intermediate Spanish courses at UMBC, and she managed the educational online platform used in those courses. In the LLC program, Violeta plans to further investigate writing, this time with a focus on the development of writing proficiency in Spanish as a second language. She would also like to explore the use of technology to tailor learning experiences in online settings in Advanced Spanish Content Courses.

Contact: violetalaura@umbc.edu

Emek Ergun

Emek received her B.A. degree in Translation Studies at Bogazici University, the most prestigious public university in Turkey. In college, she discovered how much she enjoyed translating literary texts and delving into translation theory. After graduating from college in 2002, she translated an art history book from English into Turkish, which intensified her passion for translation. Emek also taught English at several educational institutions in Turkey, including a private university. This experience revealed to her some of the dynamics of second language acquisition and teaching English. During her college years, Emek began becoming involved with the women’s movement in Turkey through Pazartesi, a well-known monthly feminist publication, which she has been translating and writing articles for since 1999. Upon recognizing her need to improve her theoretical knowledge on gender and sexuality, Emek came to the U.S. in 2003 to study at Towson University, where she received her M.S. degree in Women’s Studies in 2006. Her thesis was on the “Social, Medical, and Legal Control of Female Sexuality through Construction of Virginity in Turkey.” The interdisciplinary nature of the LLC program reflects Emek’s diverse but related research interests: translation studies, translation pedagogy, gender and sexuality studies, medical sociology, sociolinguistics, communication studies, and social constructionism. In LLC, Emek plans to focus her research on some aspect of the intersection of feminist studies and translation studies. Upon completion of her Ph.D. degree in the LLC program, she plans to return to Turkey to teach translation studies enriched with gender and sexuality studies. She will also continue her career as a professional translator concentrating on women’s works.

Contact: eergun1@umbc.edu

Danika Rockett

Danika comes to the LLC program with a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in English from Louisiana Tech University, with a focus on technical writing. For the past year, Danika has taught writing courses for the University of Baltimore (UB). She is currently teaching two sections of freshman composition here at UMBC, and she is also teaching a writing course via the Web for UB. Danika’s professional life so far has been devoted mostly to teaching composition. She worked as a writing center tutor while working toward her M.A., and then she began teaching classes full time. She always planned to earn a Ph.D., but she wasn’t sure exactly what her focus would be. Danika moved to Baltimore from Louisiana in 2004 to work as a copy editor for a local not-for-profit organization, but her love of teaching led her back to the classroom only nine months later. Students at UB tend to be professionals who are attending school part time while maintaining their careers, so Danika realized that many students could benefit from online writing courses and perhaps from online writing centers. This insight is what brought her to the LLC program. In the LLC program, Danika plans to study aspects of the online classroom and the possibility of implementing an online university writing center. Because of experiences in the classroom, Danika is also interested in examining writing in English as a Second Language in order to better serve her international students. In addition to her teaching duties, Danika also serves as a part-time Program Assistant for LLC and as a Senator for the Graduate Student Association at UMBC.

Contact: danika1@umbc.edu

Corine Toomer

Corine comes to the LLC program with a Master’s Degree in Biology/ Nutrition from the University of Bridgeport and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology with a Medical focus from the University of Pennsylvania. She is originally from Western Massachusetts, where she attended MacDuffie School for Girls. Young women from all over the United States and many countries including Somalia, Turkey, and El Salvador were represented in the community. There, she began to discover the special interest that she had in language and culture. She later had the opportunity to participate in a 6 week summer program at Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico. Also, while at Penn she participated in the Language College House program. For the last 17 years, Corine has worked in pharmaceutical sales with a focus on a variety of disease states. One of the most interesting assignments in which Corine participated was with Eli Lilly Pharmaceutical Company as they began to investigate the different cultural presentations of depression in African American and Hispanic patients. Her Medical Anthropology interests were rekindled! For the past 7 years, she has been working at Sanofi-Aventis Pharmaceutical Company where she has been specializing in the area of Oncology. Many of the patient profiles are African American women of all ages who are referred to the oncologists with more advanced disease in comparison to their Caucasian counterparts. In LLC, she plans to examine some of the cultural reasons for their advanced stage of disease presentation. With an increased understanding of the cultural barriers to early diagnosis and treatment, the mortality of African American women may be significantly reduced. Corine is also a wife to David and a mother to two daughters, Davianne 19 and Haley 8. She also serves in the student ministries at her church.

Contact: corine.toomer@sanofi-aventis.com

Chikao (Chik) Tsubaki

Chik is originally from Seoul, Korea, and Atsugi, Japan, where he graduated from high school. He has been teaching at Baltimore City Community College (BCCC) since 1996. Currently an associate professor of English, Chik teaches English composition, English literature, developmental English, and humanities both in traditional and online modes. Before coming to BCCC, he taught a variety of subjects, including sociology, philosophy, reading, World Literature, business writing, and business computer applications as an adjunct in such institutions as UMUC, UDC, Prince George’s Community College, Montgomery College, Trinity College, Central Texas College, and Northern Virginia Community College. Before entering the teaching field, Chik worked for almost thirty years in various governmental and non-governmental agencies as a management specialist at the Maryland Department of Budget and Fiscal Planning, administrative officer at the Cooperative Housing Foundation, special assistant at Legal Services Corporation, and Senior Aide Director at the Maryland Office on Aging. Chik holds multiple M.A.’s in Comparative Literature and English Language and Literature, from the University of Maryland; in Liberal Arts from Johns Hopkins University; and in Public Administration from American University. Chik won the Maryland Distance Learning Association (MDLA) best distance course for 2003 and was named the best distance educator for 2005. His research in LLC will focus on online writing tutoring services for college composition students.

Contact: ctsubaki@bccc.edu

Top

Polina Vinogradova

Polina is a native of St. Petersburg, Russia, where she obtained her dual undergraduate degree in Teaching Chemistry and English in 1997. After that, she taught a variety of EFL courses including Chemistry in English, at Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, and in 2000, started in an M.A. TESOL program at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) as a part of an ongoing exchange between the two schools. At UNI, she also had a teaching assistantship and taught ESL courses for the Culture and Intensive English Program. Upon her graduation in 2002, Polina returned to St. Petersburg to continue working as an interpreter, teaching EFL, and developing educational software at Herzen University. In 2003, Polina moved back to the United Sates to work for the University of Tennessee at Martin as an intercultural facilitator. Her interest in Intercultural Communication, passion for teaching, and a desire to obtain a Ph.D. in Intercultural Communication and Linguistics brought her to UMBC first as an M.A. student in Intercultural Communication (INCC) and now as a Doctoral student in LLC. Polina’s research interests are in identity and discourse analysis in a multicultural context. She has conducted several studies on identity realization in narrative plots of non-US-born women and on symbolism and identity negotiation in digital stories. She has also presented her findings at a number of conferences, co-conducted a workshop at the SIETAR-USA conference in 2005, and co-facilitated an intercultural training/orientation session for the UMBC Intercultural Living Exchange program. Polina has also published on teaching Chemistry in English and the role of discourse in Second Language Acquisition in Russia and Colombia. Polina is interested in an academic career and hopes to teach Linguistics and Intercultural Communication courses at a university after receiving her Ph.D. in LLC.

Contact: polinaV1@umbc.edu

Kaye Wise Whitehead

Originally from Washington, DC, Kaye joined the UMBC community in 2005 as a Master Teacher for the Center for History Education’s Teaching America History Program. Since then, she has worked with the Baltimore City Teaching Residency (BCTR) and the New Teacher Project as a Master Teacher training social studies teachers in historical thinking skills. Kaye has also been working as a Baltimore City middle school Social Studies teacher and was recently named the 2006 Gilder Lehrman Preserve America MD History Teacher of the Year. She was also selected as one of the 2006-07 MD Historical Society’s Lord Baltimore Research Fellows (focusing on 19th Century free Black women in Baltimore) and in 2005, was one of two teachers selected nationwide to serve as the Monticello’s Center’s Barringer Research Fellow (studying Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with the Hemings family). Before relocating to Baltimore, with her family, Kaye worked as documentary filmmaker with Metro Television in New York where she was nominated for three New York-Emmy Awards. Her most successful documentary was the New York Emmy-nominated film, Twin Towers: A History, which has been airing on PBS on every September 11 since 2002. Selected in 1997 and 1998 as the recipient of the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award by the Gwendolyn Brooks Creative Writing Center, Kaye is also a published writer and poet. She is one of the writers in Dr. Henry Louis Gates’ upcoming African American National Biography and the forthcoming Encyclopedia of African American History. Kaye received her Master’s Degree in International Peace Studies from the University of Notre Dame’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Kaye was interested in LLC because the diversity of the program would allow her to pursue her interests in cross-cultural communication and 19th Century history. Her dissertation will be a comparative study of black women’s political agencies in antebellum America and the Civil Rights Movement. Kaye also teaches in the Department of Communication at Loyola College.

Contact: wise@umbc.edu

Top

Cohort 10

Christopher Browder

Chris is an ESOL teacher at Wilde Lake High School in Howard County, where he teaches language and literacy to English Language Learners. Like most ESOL teachers, he uses content-based language teaching and sheltered instruction in an attempt to provide these students with grade-appropriate content and the English language development they need. Because he is certified to teach social studies, he also teaches U.S. History and American Government classes to ESOL students. Chris often supports his county as a curriculum designer and hopes to have more opportunities to make other contributions in the future. Chris’ primary area of interest is focused on English language learners with limited-formal schooling in secondary schools. He has joined the LLC program in order to have the guidance he needs to conduct quality research on this growing subgroup. Chris hopes that research on this group, including the challenges they face in the public school system and promising practices that may help these students develop needed academic language and literacy skills, will help inform educational practices and policies. Chris has a B.A. in Political Science and an Ed.M.A. in TESOL from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Before settling back in the United States in 2002, he spent nearly ten years overseas. Chris has taught English in Korea, Thailand, India, Mongolia, and the United States. He has also taught TESOL courses for students preparing to be English teachers in the Sookmyung Women’s University TESOL Program that UMBC helped to establish in Seoul, Korea.

Contact: browder1@umbc.edu

Marilena Draganescu

Marilena is originally from Romania. She received her B.A. from the University of Bucharest in the Faculty of Philology. After working for five years as a high school teacher of Romanian and English Literature in Bucharest, she decided to further her education and moved to the United States with her husband in 1996. Marilena obtained an M.A. in Comparative Literature and an M.A. in TESOL from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. At UIUC, she worked as a graduate teaching assistant, teaching courses in World Literature and World Religions. After graduation, she spent her Optional Practical Training year in Chicago as an English instructor in the Adult Education Program at Richard J. Daley College. In 2002, Marilena decided to return to her home country and took up employment with the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest, where she taught a variety of Business English courses. She also worked as an English Instructor at Prosper Language Center in Bucharest, teaching Cambridge exam preparation courses and special business courses for corporate clients. In 2006, Marilena returned to the United States and joined her husband, who was appointed to a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at UMBC. She currently works as an English instructor in the English Language Center, where she teaches Level 4 classes and serves as a writing tutor. In the LLC Program, Marilena’s major interest is in the teaching of academic writing. She plans to investigate the psychological effects of writing in a second language and intends to look at autobiographical and/or diary information from writers who wrote in a second language, either by choice or forced by exile.

Contact: mari4@umbc.edu

Lori Edmonds

A Maryland native, Lori received her B.A. in Modern Languages and Linguistics, with a Latin-American language and culture focus, from UMBC. During that time, she spent one year studying at Mexican National Autonomous University (UNAM) in Mexico City. After earning her bachelor’s degree, she continued her studies at UMBC in the M.A. Program in ESOL/Bilingual Education. She is currently teaching ESOL at the English Language Center at UMBC and is working on a project that will train Maryland public school teachers to effectively teach English language learners (ELLs) in the content areas. Before coming to UMBC, Lori was a foster parent for special needs children in Baltimore City. Her 15 years of experience with these children piqued her interest in literacy and language diversity and opened her eyes to questions of equity in the public schools. Her year in Mexico City furthered her interest in these areas and provided an opportunity for her to explore the effects of European colonization on Mexican indigenous cultures. Lori’s Master’s studies allowed her to build upon her earlier experiences by teaching her how to begin to work toward solutions that promote equity in education. Toward this end, Lori has completed projects that taught English through environmentalism to Hispanic adults and to English Language Learners in the secondary school. In addition to teaching English, the focus of these programs has been to empower immigrants in Maryland’s environmental community. The LLC Ph.D. program will enable Lori to take her work to the next level. She plans to focus on the way our public schools teach students who come from diverse backgrounds and how to empower students from diverse cultures in the American mainstream.

Contact: le1@umbc.edu

Top

Troy S. Grant

Originally from New Haven, Connecticut, Troy joined the United States Air Force one month after graduating from high school, where he became a military policeman in the K-9 division. Troy later earned his Bachelor’s degree in History (Magna Cum Laude) from the City University of New York. While in college, he served as president of his honor society, Phi Eta Sigma; was an intern for Hillary Clinton’s Senatorial Exploratory Committee; participated in the National Model United Nations Conference; and became a McNair Scholar. He later received his Master of Arts degree in Teaching from Johns Hopkins University. Troy has been a Baltimore City Public School teacher, where he taught History in middle school and both History and U.S. Government in high school. He also served as an Assistant Principal of his high school for one year. As a U.S. Government teacher, Troy was the subject of a Baltimore Fox 45 Cover Story, when he recited the United States Constitution from memory. He was also featured in a New York Times article, “One True Thing,” about teachers who make a difference. He is also a published author, with an autobiography (now in its second edition) and several freelance articles for the Baltimore Sun. Troy was interested in the LLC program because of its interdisciplinary nature. His major research interest is focused on how a state educates one of its most vulnerable, marginalized populations--children in foster care. Upon receiving his Ph.D., he wants to provide better information about educating these children and also to open a boarding school for African American boys who are in the foster care system.

Contact: tgrant1@umbc.edu

Hui Chi (Hilda) Huang

Hilda comes from Taiwan, where she received her B.A. degree in English at Chung Hsing University. As an English major, she was strongly interested in British and American literature. Continuing her passion for literature, Hilda earned her M.A. in English at Providence University, where she also obtained her kindergarten teacher’s license. Encouraged by the growth of children under her instruction, Hilda became more interested in teaching. As a full-time collegiate director for her church for three years, Hilda continued her teaching career as a part-time instructor in three private universities. The more she taught, the more she wanted to learn. During her two years of teaching at the Overseas Chinese Institute of Technology, she became interested in teaching English as a Second Language, especially meeting the needs of low-level EFL learners, and decided to study for another M.A., this time in TESL, at Arkansas Tech University. During her study in TESL, Hilda realized the influence that culture can have on second language acquisition and wondered what that might mean for Taiwan, where many students had low English proficiency, even after studying six years of English. She noticed the effects of Disney cartoons upon children’s learning and wanted to research how they might influence children’s English learning. She became interested in the LLC Program because of its focus on social and cultural research. She plans to examine Taiwanese language education, focusing on the role of culture and ways of improving Taiwanese students’ English language learning. She is interested in teaching at the college level after completing her Ph.D. and wants to conduct research related to Taiwan’s language policy.

Contact: hhuang2@umbc.edu

Kelly Lynch

Kelly decided to pursue a B.A. in Spanish and English Secondary Education at Saint Francis University after living in Jimenez, Mexico, for a year as a high school exchange student. After graduating in 1990, she began teaching both English and Spanish at South Western High School in Hanover, Pennsylvania. Kelly also attended the Summer Language Institute at Middlebury College, where she received her Master’s of Spanish Language and Literature in 1993. Since that time, she has devoted herself to her teaching career. She has also had the opportunity to be involved in several capacities in the Pennsylvania State Education Association. In addition to teaching high school Spanish and English, Kelly is also an adjunct faculty member at Harrisburg Area Community College, where she has taught many courses for both credit and non-credit. The non-credit courses usually have been community outreach programs where she has instructed local banks, construction companies and factories on how to communicate with their employees in Spanish. Although Kelly has a background in literature and education, she is intrigued by sociology and linguistics and has chosen to pursue a doctorate in the LLC Program because of its interdisciplinary nature and because it enables her to build on her experiences as an educator. In the LLC Program, Kelly will be studying the political discourse surrounding the topic of Latin-American immigration to the United States.

Contact: klynch3@umbc.edu

Jeremy Trucker

Jay was born and raised in Monmouth County, New Jersey. He did his undergraduate work at Ursinus College in Southeastern Pennsylvania, where he received a B.A. degree in English Literature. He continued his studies in English Literature at the University of Delaware, where he received his M.A. degree. Before moving to Baltimore in 2005, Jay worked for several community colleges in New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. He taught for a year at Morgan State University and is now on the faculty of the Dundalk campus of The Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC). At CCBC, he teaches Basic Writing, Composition, Literature and Technical Writing. In June 2007, he began working as the Director of the Honors Program as well. With the LLC Program, Jay is excited to take on a new challenge and begin a program that will allow him to explore issues pertinent to his career as an educator. He hopes to use his research to explore many realms of post-secondary two-year education, with an emphasis on nontraditional students and written composition. In particular, he plans to explore culturally responsive instruction, online education, and community building, as well as Honors Programs at the community college. As a part-time student in LLC, Jay sees himself as at the beginning of a long and challenging program of study. He welcomes the possibilities of an interdisciplinary program and the sense of community present in the Program. His goal is to use his experiences at UMBC to enhance his classroom and his administrative work at CCBC.

Contact: jeremt1@umbc.edu

Top

Rita Turner

Rita received her bachelor’s degree in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, where she focused her studies on education and literature. While working on her degree, she also became certified to teach secondary language arts. After graduating, she returned to her home state of Maryland and settled in Baltimore. She spent two years teaching English at a public high school in western Baltimore City, where she learned a great deal about the challenges facing underprivileged students and urban school systems. Rita wanted to learn new and better approaches for developing respect, compassion, agency and voice through education, so she returned to her studies. She obtained her master’s degree in liberal arts from Johns Hopkins University, studying the history of ideas. For her graduate project, she designed an interdisciplinary curriculum intended to formulate a more sustainable relationship with the world, using text, dialogue and writing in an effort to deepen students’ empathy and awareness for the other, the community, and the ecosystem. As a student in the LLC Program, Rita hopes to continue pursuing her goal of finding ways to use education to help cultivate environmental and social consciousness. She plans to develop additional curricula that challenge our cultural perceptions of the human and non-human other and which generate qualities of empathy, respect and a sense of interconnection. Her ultimate goal is to start a secondary school in Baltimore City organized around a focus of sustainability and environmental and social consciousness.

Contact: rturner2@umbc.edu

Jeanine Williams

Jeanine holds a B.A. degree in Psychology from Eastern College, an M.S.Ed. in Human Development from the University of Pennsylvania, and an Ed.S. in Education Policy from The George Washington University. Her research has focused on identity development and how it plays out in educational settings. Jeanine has held positions in college student development, retention and academic support at The George Washington University and Trinity College. Currently, she serves as adjunct professor of developmental studies at Villa Julie College. In this position, she teaches courses designed to help first-year college students to develop their critical reading, writing and thinking skills. Through her work, Jeanine has acquired a strong interest in literacy and its relationship to identity. In the LLC Program, she plans to further pursue this interest, focusing on the relationships among critical literacy, identity development, and retention. Specifically, her research will focus on critical pedagogy to foster critical literacy, identity development and persistence among under-prepared first-year college students. Previously, Jeanine served as the Director of the Future Focus program at Trinity College in Washington, D.C. In this position, she was responsible for planning and implementing a retention-based academic bridge program for under-prepared, first-year students. Jeanine has also served as a consultant in developing such programs at other institutions. Upon completion of her doctoral studies, Jeanine would like to continue teaching and researching literacy. She would also like to serve as a consultant to developmental reading and writing programs in the areas of faculty and curriculum development, particularly in the use of critical pedagogy and appropriate curricula. Because developmental coursework is so pivotal to student retention and ultimately increased access to higher education among disadvantaged populations, it is her hope that such curricula will become policy at institutions nationwide.

Contact: willij1@umbc.edu

Top

Cohort 11

Kathleen Callaghan

For ten years, Kathleen Callaghan has been teaching and working with urban immigrant adolescent students in Baltimore City Schools. She is faced every day with fascinating and challenging issues regarding her students’ language and literacy needs. In broad terms, Kathleen is interested in all factors that produce, inhibit, or otherwise influence school success of immigrant adolescents. Linguistic, school, climate and instructional practices that support or hinder ELL and immigrant achievement; societal, cultural, and political forces such as ideologies around immigrants and immigration; and state and federal policies regarding high-stakes testing or college admission for undocumented students all affect school success for English language learners. Kathleen plans to study and research these intersecting themes and areas as well as the interrelation of these areas in the public spheres of discourse and debate over politics, policy, language, education, and schools. She intends to incorporate ethnographic methods in her research to uncover the personal narratives that reflect broader social forces. Kathleen is also interested in the literacy habits of immigrant students and families and hopes to work to develop empowering literacy skills among them. She is particularly interested in using the study of language—through discourse and linguistic analysis—as the means and method to study broad social or policy implications in the arenas of immigration, language education, and urban schools. Two language issues that Kathleen hopes to examine are the discursive construction of American and immigrant identity and the language and dialect acquisition of adolescent English language learners in urban settings.

Contact: kcalla1@hotmail.com

Samir El Omari

Samir El Omari began dreaming of a career in teaching and being a curriculum developer in the mid-nineties in his homeland of Morocco. After acquiring a variety of degrees and certificates in assorted fields, he began working for the Ministry of Education as an analyst programmer, and then became an instructor for employees as well as student interns from public and private universities. He also volunteered teaching Arabic and Islamic studies to illiterate adult Moroccan citizens, as well as teaching basic computer skills to elementary school children. All of these teaching experiences grew into a dream to teach higher education. During his years with the Ministry of Education, Samir continued his own education, earning degrees in Economics and Accounting, Business Management, Computer Science, and Fashion Design. Samir dreamed of traveling to the USA and continuing his own education, hoping to earn a graduate degree. In fall 2000, he was granted a student visa to attend UMBC, where he earned his Bachelor’s of Science in Information Systems. Three years later, he received a Master’s of Arts in Instructional Systems Development, and in 2008, he received a Graduate Certificate in Distance Education. Samir has worked within the Modern Language and Linguistics Department at UMBC as a Lecturer in French and Arabic, and he has developed the Arabic curriculum at UMBC, implementing an online tutorial. In the LLC program, Samir plans to focus on computer-mediated communication and content-based foreign language instruction.

Contact: samir1@umbc.edu

Top

Jennifer Harrison

Jennifer Harrison teaches at the National Labor College (NLC), an upper two-year college for union members. She earned a Master of Arts in English from the University of Maryland, College Park, writing a thesis focused on patriarchy’s impact on the mother-daughter relationship in 18th century women’s novels, and a Bachelor’s of Arts in English from Washington College. Currently she is interested in how class and work are represented in American Literature. In 1999, Jennifer began teaching writing and critical thinking courses at the NLC to strengthen students’ skills, teach them the basics of research, and prepare them for the challenging writing curriculum. Since then, she has created labor literature courses, contributed to the development of the online program, and served the faculty and administration as a writing consultant. In fall of 2007, Jennifer became an assistant professor at NLC with two new assignments: writing the reaccreditation self-study for Middle States and managing the experiential learning program. Additionally, she was tasked with developing and writing the college’s strategic plan. Jennifer taught courses in composition, rhetoric, literature, developmental writing, and women’s studies at Montgomery College from 1998 to 2008 and at Anne Arundel Community College. As online classes became options at both schools, she learned to present both fully online and hybrid courses in multiple educational software formats. Before teaching, she also worked as a writer and editor in higher education association publishing. Jennifer lives in Columbia, Maryland with her husband, Chris Premo, and two sons, Jacob, and Jason.

Contact: jm.harrison@comcast.net

Hye Sook Lee

Hye Sook Lee came to UMBC through three different continents. She grew up and finished her Bachelor’s degree in German Language and Literacy and Education in South Korea and achieved her Bachelor’s and Master’s in Information Science and Comparative Cultural Studies in Germany. During this time, she was challenged not just by different subjects, but also by the language, people and culture around her. Like her diverse cultural background, her work experiences are also various. Since Hye Sook understands new information technology, she worked at the IT department in a promotion agency in Berlin, where she improved her skills as well as learned to communicate with other German coworkers at the workplace. She also coordinated 12 Korean companies to take part in the International Funk Mess (IFA) in Berlin on behalf of the Korean Trade Agency (KOTRA). Hye Sook also often worked as a Korean-German translator for meetings and exhibitions between Korean and German business people. By doing so, she gathered experiences in intercultural interactions and became more interested in them. Hye Sook is aware of the difficulties of crossing boarders and is willing to help other people to adjust in different cultures. In order to do this, she has decided to more systematically to explore this field. Fortunately, she found the right place to start with the interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Language, Literacy and Culture at UMBC. Hye Sook really appreciates being enrolled in this program, as she believes it is a unique program, and the academic environment at UMBC is challenging as well as encouraging for her. She believes she can expand her academic knowledge and perspectives.

Contact: lee32@umbc.edu

Cara Okopny

Cara is originally from Detroit, Michigan, holds an M.A. in Women’s Studies from the University of South Florida, and a B.A. in Liberal Studies from Grand Valley State University. Before moving to Maryland, Cara taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies at her alma mater in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She taught courses on diversity, mass media, women and gender studies, and poverty/social justice. Cara was drawn to the LLC program because she is excited by interdisciplinary work. After completing her doctorate, Cara hopes to return to her first love--teaching undergraduates to critically engage the world around them. Her research interests include identity development, mass media/media representation of marginalized groups, and social justice. Cara is interested in learning how people construct their class identities and how such constructions inevitably shape social values and policies. These days, Cara can be seen working on campus as the Graduate Coordinator for Cultural and Religious Diversity, where she helps oversee the Mosaic and Interfaith Centers. When not studying, Cara enjoys spending time with family and friends, reading, traveling, and being outdoors whenever possible.

Contact: okopnyc@yahoo.com

Top

Panthea Parang

Panthea received her bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Goucher College in Baltimore and her Master’s degree in Modern Studies from Loyola College. After graduate school she worked for the Maryland State Government for 7 years including the offices of Governor Ehrlich, where she reported to the Governor’s Deputy Chief of Staff. She then moved to the Department of Housing and Community Development where as a housing analyst she worked on housing availability projects for the low income populations in Maryland, and analyzed trends in Maryland housing markets, including housing supplies and availabilities across the state. Panthea then pursued her interest in nonprofits and activism and received a nonprofit management certificate from UMBC while serving on two local nonprofit boards in Columbia, Maryland. Within these organizations she was involved in community development and outreach projects to involve more residents, and focused on initiatives such as the city’s pedestrian pathways and the beautification of local neighborhoods. While she is a student in the LLC program, Panthea plans to focus on migration topics, specifically the cultural adjustments of new immigrants in the United States. As a native of Iran who came to the United States at a young age, cultural adjustment and immigration issues are close to her heart. Upon the completion of this program Panthea plans on returning to government positions in particular fields related to migration patterns and housing related issues.

Contact: panthea1@umbc.edu

Amy Pucino

Amy Pucino earned a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Hood College and continued her education at American University, receiving a Master’s in Sociology. Initially, Amy was an education major, but through participating in Americorp as a volunteer for a literacy program in lower income school districts, she became aware of the inequalities within education systems. As a result, she decided to study these inequalities and methods of uprooting these through sociology. Throughout her education, Amy has attempted to blend a study of education systems with a theoretical grounding in sociological thought. This process showed her the value of interdisciplinary studies and inspired her interest in the Language, Literacy and Culture program. Amy has since become certified to teach children with reading differences to read and has been certified to teach English as a Foreign Language. She has taught children and adults in both capacities and plans to continue to teach. Her work in the educational field has inspired her research interests around school and community partnerships, social capital, student achievement, and cultural sensitivity of English language teachers. She values research that has an applied, public purpose, which is partly why she works with Social Dynamics, an applied sociological evaluation research organization. Amy is currently a Graduate Assistant in the LLC Program, working with Dr. Claudia Galindo as a Research Assistant and is helping the LLC Program Assistant, Pam Gemmill.

Contact: Amy.pucino@umbc.edu

Doaa Rashed

Originally from Egypt, Doaa Rashed started teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Egypt in 1996. In 2000, she came to UMBC for an in-service teacher training program in collaboration with the English Language Center, the Education Department at UMBC and the Ministry of Education in Egypt. After teaching English in Egypt for two more years, Doaa joined another teacher training program at California University. During her studies at UMBC, she enjoyed the welcoming family environment and the feeling of inclusion from everyone who participated in planning and implementing the program. The passionate cultural understanding and appreciation she experienced at UMBC made the decision to return to UMBC easy. In 2005, Doaa started her Master’s in Teaching English as a Second Language in the Instructional Systems Development program at UMBC. She has also been teaching English as a second language at the English Language Center at UMBC, where she also conducted her Master’s research. Her Master’s thesis, supervised by Dr. JoAnn Crandall, LLC director, investigated English as a Second Language learners’ perceptions toward technology integration in their language learning experience. She examined a variety of technology applications including: WebQuests, Blogs, the World Wide Web, learning software, and language skills learning CDs. Upon completing her M.A., she enrolled in UMBC’s Language, Literacy and Culture Ph.D. program with the goal of further investigating Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and its impact on learning and training outcomes. She is very excited about the diverse opportunities the program provides to students to combine different fields of study.

Contact: doaa1@umbc.edu

Top

Autumn Reed

Autumn received her B.A. degree in History from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. After completing her degree at this women’s college, she decided to pursue an M.A. in Intercultural Communications at the University of Maryland Baltimore, County because she was attracted to its interdisciplinary approach that did not necessarily “box her in” to any one discipline. Due to Notre Dame’s women-centered approach and Autumn’s later interactions with the Pakistani community, she became interested in the relationships between gender, power, and language within this community. While at UMBC, Autumn wrote and presented her scholarly paper entitled A Pakistani Family Living in the U.S.: Hierarchy in Everyday Domestic Discourse in which she analyzed domestic conversations between Pakistani family members to demonstrate the interplay between language and power in linguistic discourse. Also in line with her interests, she began a study entitled Why Culture Kills, which examines honor killings within Pakistan by rejecting the notion of ‘tradition effect’ and focusing on the real cause: economic material conditions and the transmission of a gendered social order through cultural reproduction. Like the M.A. program, the interdisciplinary nature of the LLC fits her research goals perfectly. In the LLC program, Autumn will examine the issue of honor within the Pakistan community as a moment in a world historical process in order to challenge patriarchy both at home and abroad and legitimize the multi-dimensional experiences of Pakistani women. Following the completion of LLC, Autumn plans to continue her activism against honor killings and secure a position as an academic in a university.

Contact: autumn2@umbc.edu

Beshon Smith

A native New Yorker, Beshon Smith received her Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice from John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Baruch College. Both universities are part of the City University of New York. During the summer of 2004, Beshon, her husband and two children relocated to Maryland, excited to explore the educational opportunities offered by the DC Metropolitan Area. Beshon’s personal and professional journey has made the pursuit of a doctoral degree an inevitable endeavor. As an African-American female, former teenage parent and first generation college student, her early exposure into the realities of cultural capital, social reproduction, gender gaps and racism, ignited a strong desire for her to better understand the “differences” of this world. She has devoted the past thirteen years of her life to programs and services that seek to empower via education and comprehensive support. Beshon is currently the Deputy Director of the Choice Program, a community intervention program located inside of UMBC’s Shriver Center. Operating ten offices throughout the state of Maryland, the Choice Program seeks to reduce juvenile delinquency and disproportionate minority confinement via intensive monitoring and supportive services that work to empower youth and families. The interdisciplinary nature of the LLC program provides the perfect platform for Beshon to explore the many facets of race, class and gender inequalities. She is particularly interested in working with the youth and families served by the Choice Program in the construction and interpretation of race, class and gender issues as they relate to their communities, the education system and legal institutions.

Contact: beshons@umbc.edu

Anissa Jane Sorokin

Anissa Sorokin received a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature and a Certificate in Advanced Professional and Expository Writing from Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 2006. During her junior year, she became interested in teaching and began graduate courses in Education as part of a 5-year Master’s program. She enjoyed her coursework and student teaching experience, and received her M.Ed. in 2007, but decided to pursue a different field—linguistics—before committing herself to education full-time. Anissa discovered linguistics during her senior undergraduate year, but she was unable to develop her interest at that time. However, three months after earning her M.Ed., she began a Master’s degree in Language and Communication at Georgetown University. One class in particular, Linguistics in Reading, helped Anissa define her research interests (though they are always changing) and decide to pursue a doctorate. Anissa chose to apply to the LLC program because of its interdisciplinary nature and strong research focus. During her time in the LLC program, Anissa hopes to conduct research on heritage speakers. As a Russian heritage speaker herself, she is interested in issues of ethnic identity construction and heritage speakers’ experiences with their heritage language. Anissa also looks forward to pursuing research that could be relevant to her current job at the United States Census Bureau, where she works as a research support team member in the Language and Measurement group, which is part of the Statistical Research Division. Anissa also works as a Graduate Assistant, assisting Pam Gemmill in the LLC department.

Contact: sorokin1@umbc.edu

Laura Strickling

Laura graduated from Brigham Young University in 1977 with a B.A. in Art and Music. Her interest in intercultural communication began when her husband's work sent the family to Spain and they all began to learn Spanish. Within this new cultural environment, she became acutely aware of bilingual identity issues, and also, with two children in the Department of Defense schools and two in the Spanish school system, the factors that played a role in language acquisition and the integration of her children into Spanish culture. Because of this experience, in 1997 Laura received a second B.A. in Spanish at Augusta State University with certification in secondary education. Later she received National Board Certification in world languages. As a high school Spanish teacher, she developed curricula based upon student-centered communicative experiences, themes, and an integration of first and fourth year students. She also developed an elementary school tutoring program for Latino children and co-sponsored an International Club which discussed intercultural, political, and social issues. Laura also founded a two-week Spanish immersion program for high school students in Rota, Spain. More recently, as a member of an intercultural congregation in Baltimore, Laura’s graduate study interests have shifted to explore power distance, gender and material culture within religious discourse communities. Her most extensive research was a pragmatic analysis exploring how socio-economic factors mediate power distance as Latter-day Saint women approach God in prayer. In 2008, she received an M.A. in Intercultural Communication at UMBC. The interdisciplinary focus of the LLC program lends itself well to Laura’s experiences. She plans to continue her research of power distance within religious discourse communities, and develop an intercultural communication training program employing a discourse approach within a religious context.

Contact: lastr1@umbc.edu

Top