SELS

David McCormick

David McCormick began his journey as an ESL teacher during a one-year stay in Brazil, where he confirmed how much he enjoys interacting with people from other cultures, as well as his love of second language learning and teaching. After earning an MA in TESOL from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in 2004, David spent several years teaching at Yonsei University in South Korea, where he honed his skills teaching English grammar and oral communication. David became a full-time faculty member at Foothill College in 2014 where he has...

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 Extension’s English Language Program from 1988 to 2004. He has been with the Summer English Language Studies program since 2004.

Christopher Meierotto

Chris Meierotto holds a MA in Applied Linguistics with a language teaching specialization. His experiences learning foreign languages inspired him to become a language teacher. His specializations include English for Academic Purposes, assessment, and pragmatics. Before coming to the SELS, Chris taught academic writing and oral communication skills at the University of Oregon, and has worked in public, non-profit, and private education in Colorado, Oregon, California, and South Korea. Chris currently teaches in Oakland and works in language assessment in San Francisco.

Nora Mitchell

Nora Mitchell holds a B.A. from UC Berkeley focused on French language and history. After careers in high-tech marketing and non-profit management, she earned a TESL certificate from UC Berkeley Extension and an M.A. TESOL from the University of San Francisco. When teaching, she draws from her prior professional experiences both overseas and in the U.S. She currently teaches American business culture, public speaking, accent reduction, and business writing skills privately to international professionals. During the academic school year, she can also be found teaching reading and writing,...

Melody Noll

Born and raised in Berkeley, California, Melody Noll earned her M.A.T. at The School for International Training. She began her EFL/ESL career in Zurich, Switzerland and now has nearly 40 years’ experience teaching everyone from small children and the elderly to scholars and business professionals. In addition, she has trained instructors on three continents, contributed to four pronunciation and listening/speaking series, and delivered North American pronunciation trainings at Bay Area and international companies. When she’s not teaching, Melody works as a life coach and volunteer...

Michele Rajotte

Michele Rajotte holds a B.S. in Journalism and an M.A.T. in TESOL. As an ESOL instructor, in Providence, Rhode Island, she provided support to immigrants and refugees in a non-profit organization and taught blended learning classes in Workforce Education at the Community College. She was an English Teaching Fellow at Bilkent University in the MATEFL Program in Ankara, Turkey, and has spent summers in England and the U.S. teaching Italian and Japanese students. She is currently teaching English for Academic Purposes at Yasar University in Izmir, Turkey.

Paula Runnals

Paula holds a BA in Spanish from UC Berkeley and an MA in Education from Stanford University. She has taught Spanish as a foreign language in California middle and high schools, and has taught English as a second language and test preparation courses in Spain, New Zealand and Australia. She has specialized in the instruction of Academic English and Pronunciation. She currently lives in Valencia, Spain. In her free time she likes to scuba dive and was also a dive instructor. Another of her interests is traveling and to date she has lived in seven countries and has visited an...

Jordan Ruyle

Throughout his academic career, Jordan has focused on second language acquisition and second language composition, earning an MA in French literature and an MATESOL degree. Before coming to Cal, he taught at Golden Gate University, helping international graduate students prepare for the MBA program. Since joining Berkeley’s College Writing Programs in 2013, he has taught CWR1A and developed CW9C/ 109C, an academic writing course for multilingual student writers at Berkeley. In addition, he is a regular co-teacher of CW105, Intermediate Writing and Finding your Voice. In 2015, he was...

Will Seng

The majority of Will Seng's time in the UC system was spent teaching Technical Communication—writing and oral presentation skills—primarily to NNS students in the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley. But after that program was eliminated in 2009-10, he taught that class plus other ESP classes in the social and natural sciences at UC Merced. Prior to these, Will taught academic, scientific and professional writing and oral presentation skills to graduate economics students at CERGE-EI, Charles University in Prague, conversation and TOEIC and TOEFL preparation to undergrad students...

David Skolnick

Lecturer

David Skolnick (he/him) teaches CWR1A at UC Berkeley, specializing in teaching multi-lingual students, and has been teaching academic vocabulary, cultural studies, research, reading, and writing in the UC Berkeley Summer English Language Studies program since 2005. He is Assistant Professor in the Writing and Literature program at the California College of the Arts, and has taught at the College of Marin, and the San Francisco Art Institute. He got a BA in History at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a Graduate teaching certificate at George Mason University, and an MA in TESOL...