Faculty
Our faculty are the best there are. All speak languages other than English, have taught in countries outside the U.S., and have degrees from the best programs in the world. In addition, many write textbooks, speak at conferences, and have worked as consultants to government and business about learning English.
Zuleica Acker
Zuleica Acker gained her first teaching credential in London in 1986. After teaching in Spain, Ecuador and Oxford, she came to San Francisco and became a teacher trainer for the Cambridge CELTA. Working for various language schools, she taught both teachers and ESL students for 12 years. In 2007, she gained a distinction in her TESOL Masters at Oxford Brookes. Most recently she has been enjoying teaching immigrants at Laney College in Oakland and City College of San Francisco. In her free time she is an oil painter and an arts/ language student.
Matthew Barclay
With a Master's degree in TESL/TEFL from Central Washington University, Matthew Barclay brings a strong background in linguistics to his teaching. He taught overseas with the Peace Corps at Mordovian State University in Saransk, Russia, and worked as an English language teacher trainer in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where he taught language teaching methodology and academic writing while developing textbooks and other English language teaching materials. In the U.S., Matthew taught ESL at Cal State East Bay and is currently on the faculty of Los Medanos Community College, where he teaches reading, writing and critical thinking.
Jill Bond
As an ESL/EFL professional, Jill Bond has taught academic, business, survival, and, most recently, computer-assisted and vocational English language skills. After serving in the Peace Corps, where she taught English and computer skills to Garifuna and Maya villagers in Belize, Central America, Jill went on to obtain an M.A. in TESOL from the University of Maryland. Jill loves to travel, having spent much of her upbringing in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, India and other countries. As a result, she has experienced first hand what it is like to study a second language and to adapt to new cultures.
Elizabeth Boner
Elizabeth Boner has been teaching English as a Second Language in the East Bay for the past ten years. Most of her experience has been in teaching new immigrants to the United States, although more recently she has been teaching English and Business in rural Tanzania. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Education at UC Berkeley in the Language, Literacy, Society and Culture program. Her research interests include cross cultural communication, language and globalization, and second language acquisition. She is working on a dissertation entitled, "Learning to Participate," which focuses on the introduction of new language and literacy practices within Micro-Enterprise projects in Tanzania.
Jennifer Burton
Jennifer Burton received her M.A. in Linguistics/TEFL from Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier, France. Since 1986, Jennifer has taught a wide range of English courses in Spain, France, Taiwan, Japan, and the United States. She created an intensive teacher-training program designed especially for low-level non-native English teachers. As an editor and translator, Jennifer has specialized in language, education, travel, and culture. As a technical writer, she has developed online documentation, help applications, and tutorials for international end-users for companies such as Walmart.com, ChemConnect, and NBCi. She has also worked in the banking, securities, and insurance industries.
Janet Christensen
Janet Christensen received her M.A. from San Francisco State University and has been teaching English as a Second Language and English Composition in the Bay Area for many years. She began her language teaching career in Okayama, Japan, and also taught in Kazakhstan soon after it became an independent state. Her Bay Area teaching experience includes the English Center for International Women at Mills College, the University of San Francisco, UC Berkeley Extension, and California State University East Bay.
Michael Clark
Michael Clark has taught at UC Berkeley since 1991, for College Writing Programs and for the Language Proficiency Program in the Graduate Division. He has also taught university courses in Malaysia and Japan and was a volunteer teacher in the U.S. Peace Corps, serving in Central Africa. Michael lives in Berkeley with his family and occasionally writes travel guides about faraway places for Lonely Planet Publications.
Sile Convery
Síle Convery was born and raised in Ireland and came to the US in her mid twenties. Her overseas experience includes teaching in Lesotho, France and Micronesia. Her American teaching assignments have been at the English Language Program at UC Berkeley Extension, the Athenian School in Danville, Laney College in Oakland, and of course the UC Berkeley Summer English Language Institute.
Lincoln Davis
Lincoln Davis earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Columbia College in 1980's Chicago, a wonderful time and place for performing and publishing poetry. His 1995 M.A. thesis at California State University was completed while teaching high school in East Los Angeles. Universities and private homes in Madrid and Barcelona were the venue for earning his credentials in TEFLA from Cambridge University. Now at home in the Southern California "borderlands," Lincoln most recently co-edited an annotated edition of the American classic The Red Badge of Courage with ESL/EFL students in mind.
David Ellis
David Ellis has over 10 years experience teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language, including a combined six years in South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, and another as a teacher trainer at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA. David earned his B.A. in Economics & Mathematics from the US Military Academy at West Point and his M.A. in ESL from the University of Hawaii in 2002. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition at the University of Maryland.
David Frasca
David Frasca received his M.A. TESL from CUNY Hunter College in New York and has been teaching ESL at various university centers since 1985 [City University of New York, La Guardia, University of New Mexico, Los Alamos, Santa Fe Community College, Hudson County Community College, City College of San Francisco, University of California, Berkeley]. He has taught Business English in both Spain and Italy and is fluent in both Spanish and Italian. He is also a Certified Massage Therapist practicing in California.
Amanda Fox
Amanda Fox began her teaching career after graduating from Yale University in 2003 with a degree in anthropology. She taught abroad in France and Brazil, and then moved to California to earn an M.A. in TESOL from the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Since graduating, she has taught English to both immigrants and international students studying at various schools in California. She loves learning languages as well as teaching them, speaks French and Portuguese, and is currently studying Spanish.
Elizabeth Hallford
Elizabeth (Betsey) Hallford, M.A. English (TEFL), has taught in the U.S. and abroad for over 15 years, including Business English at UC Berkeley Extension San Francisco and internship seminars for ESL university students. She has designed teacher-training workshops in Brazil and South Korea, and lived in Spain, France, and Germany where she conducted business negotiation and presentation courses for engineers and technicians. An avid language learner and traveler, her current interests include raising her children in a bilingual/bicultural environment and child development
Lisa Hsu
Lisa Hsu has a B.A. in Psychology from UC Berkeley and an M.A. in Teaching English as a Second Language and a Certificate in Teaching Composition from San Francisco State University. Lisa has also studied abroad at Beijing Normal University in China. She has been involved in education on many fronts--teaching ESL in Bay Area universities and language institutes, teaching English throughout China, and serving in AmeriCorps National Service to improve literacy for at-risk youths.
Nancy Hunt
Nancy Hunt taught at the UC Berkeley Extension's English Language Program, Laney College, Holy Names University, and in The College Writing Program's Summer Institute at UC Berkeley. Her path to Berkeley and English as a Second Language teaching has included high school in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a year of university in Madrid, Spain, and ten years as an English and music professor at the University of Puebla in Mexico.
Paula Gunder
Paula Gunder's photo is also attached. Here is her bio: Paula Gunder received her M.A. in TESOL from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in 1995, focusing on computer assisted language learning, classroom discourse, and second language writing. In 2004, Paula earned her Ph.D. from the University of Arizona's interdisciplinary program in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching. She has since taught ESL and English composition in university programs in California, Arizona, Thailand, and Japan. She currently works as an ESL program and technology education consultant and as an ESL teacher at Los Medanos College.
Barbara Kaiser
Barbara Kaiser has been an instructor in the Summer Institute for more than ten years. Barbara has degrees from Harvard University and UC Berkeley as well as an M.B.A. During the academic year she teaches advanced composition for business students and health-care professionals at San Jose State University.
Sunyoung Lee
Sunyoung Lee has seven years teaching experience, including as a high school English teacher in Korea and an English language instructor at the University of Hawaii. Currently, she is teaching Korean language and linguistics at the University of Maryland, where she is also a Ph.D. student in the Department of Second Language Acquisition. Before attending Maryland, Sunyoung earned her M.A. degree in English as a Second Language at the University of Hawaii and her B.A. in English Language and Literature at Korea University.
Robert Manheimer
Rob Manheimer was born and raised in the Bay Area, and has been working in the summer program since 1999. He received an M.A. in English as a Second Language (ESL) from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He teaches ESL Spanish, and linguistics at various colleges in the Bay Area. He is presently working on a vocational ESL textbook.
Sybil Marcus
Sybil Marcus has an M.A. in English Literature from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an M.J. from UC Berkeley. She taught at The English Language Program at UC Berkeley Extension for over twenty years. She has also taught English as a Foreign Language to university students in Israel and English Literature to native speakers in England. Sybil is the author of a textbook, A World of Fiction, published by Longman. She is a frequent presenter at ESL conferences in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Tom McNichol
Tom McNichol, M.A. TEFL, has been teaching ESL in the Bay Area since 1981. He teaches full-time at San Francisco City College and is also the assistant basketball coach. Tom played college basketball at Bucknell University and went on to play in Madrid, Spain. Tom also taught at UC Berkeley Extensions English Language Program from 1988 to 2004. He has been with the Summer Institute since 2004.
Linda O'Roke
Linda O'Roke was born and raised in San Francisco. She completed her undergraduate work at Humboldt State University and her graduate work at San Francisco State University. Over the past seventeen years, Linda has taught English in the US, Japan, and Italy. She also taught Business English for many years at Hewlett-Packard in Silicon Valley Currently, Linda is teaching ESL at San Francisco City College and the University of California Berkeley. She is also an editor of many popular ESL/EFL textbooks.
Lindsay Pearson
Lindsay Pearson was born in New York City, but grew up straddling both coasts. After finishing high school in Switzerland, and attending Oberlin Conservatory of Music, she got her Master’s Degree in TESL and has been teaching English to adults for many years, in Asia and in New York at the City and State University of New York, the Riverside Language Program, and Columbia University. She also founded English for Clear Expression in Medicine and the Sciences, which provides classes for international doctoral candidates, post-docs and physicians in research institutes and hospitals.
Joyce Podevyn
Joyce Podevyn is a native of Belgium and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 20 years. Fluent in Flemish, French and English, she holds a Master's Degree in English with an option in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from CSU East Bay, and has taught English as a Second Language and English composition at American universities and colleges for the past ten years.
Michele Rajotte
Michele Rajotte has a B.S. in Journalism and a M.A.T. in Teaching English as a Second Language. She was an English Teaching Fellow at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, and has spent summers in England and the U.S. teaching Italian and Japanese students. Michele currently teaches adult immigrants and refugees in Providence, Rhode Island. Her focus is computer assisted language learning.
Melissa Reeve
Melissa Reeve has spent over ten years teaching ESL and academic writing. As an undergraduate at U.C. Berkeley, Melissa majored in English Literature but also studied Japanese, spending a year at International Christian University in Tokyo. Melissa earned her M.A. in ESL from the University of Hawaii in 1998. Since then she has worked primarily in the California Community College system. She now teaches full time at Solano College in Fairfield, CA. When she’s not busy with her job or her family, Melissa enjoys bicycling because there’s so much to see at 12 miles per hour
Jennifer Robinson
Ellen Rosenfield
Ellen Rosenfield began her career as a French secondary school teacher, but a chance opportunity to teach an ESL class convinced her to move out of foreign languages and into her current career. As an ESL professional, she has taught in community college, university, and intensive English program settings. Her work has included teaching all skill areas and levels of English, working in teacher training in Brazil, and program administration. She is happy to be back for a fourth year as a member of the SELI faculty.
Gabriela Segade
Gabriela Segade was born in Uruguay. She has a B.A. in Sociology and an M.A. in Second Language Studies from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She has taught ESL at the University of Hawaii and at Contra Costa College in the San Francisco Bay Area. After fifteen years as an ESL teacher and teacher trainer, Gabriela is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in language and literacy education at the University of California at Berkeley.
Jim Seger
Jim Seger was born in the Bay Area, went to college here--Stanford and UC Berkeley--and has taught at schools around the Bay--UC Berkeley, Mills College, and College of Marin. He has also taught in the Ivory Coast with the Peace Corps, in France at the National Center for Scientific Research, and as part of a sister-city exchange in Russia. He enjoys teaching all aspects of English, both the language and the cultures where it is spoken.
David Skolnick
David Skolnick received his B.A. in history at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a teaching certificate at George Mason University, and a M.A. in TESOL at San Francisco State University. He has taught students ranging in age from seven to seventy in public and private schools in the U.S., Taiwan, and India.
Will Seng, Assistant Director
Will Seng has been teaching Technical Communication—writing and oral presentation skills—primarily to ESL students in the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley since fall 2002. Prior to this, he taught academic, scientific and professional writing and oral presentation skills to graduate economics students at CERGE-EI, Charles University in Prague as well as conversation and TOEIC and TOEFL preparation to university students in Kyoto, Japan. His teaching career began in the community colleges in the Bay Area, where he taught all levels of composition to native, immigrant and international students. Currently, he is the Book Review Editor of TESL-EJ and, outside the classroom, he participates in the San Francisco Sex Politics Study Group, which he helped found in 1994.
Margi Wald, Director
Margi Wald, M.A. in Applied English Linguistics, is currently a lecturer in the College Writing Programs at UC Berkeley, Co-editor of The CATESOL Journal, and editor of Second Language Writing News for TESOL. She has taught in ESL programs and English departments in Texas, Tennessee, Illinois, and California. Her areas of specialization include general academic preparation and instruction in editing and vocabulary.