Our Leadership
Board Members - Communications
Mohamed Lamine Diallo, VP Communications
VPCommunications@nystesol.org
Mohamed Lamine Diallo is a social entrepreneur and writer living in the United States since 2014. He has been an education advocate for several years, from his native Guinea-Conakry to the United States. He is the author of Redefining the Citizen of the New Millennium and best known for being the founder of Amedine International Citizens Center (AICC), a United States based nonprofit organization with a global outreach geared toward providing educational resources and creating economic opportunities to young people from immigrant families in the United States and in developing countries. The main focus of his research and activities have been directed for the past 5 years towards finding a lasting and effective solution to stop the massive death of young Africans in the Mediterranean Sea.
In the United States, he trains and mentors local high school and
college students to become social impact agents through personal
development workshops and inspirational speeches he delivers at both
colleges and local communities.
As Vice President of communication, he believes that NYS TESOL has
the potential to help students break language and cultural barriers and
give them a new perspective on life; For these students, the new
language and culture is a powerful tool to change the world for better
by building bridges, bringing about peace and promoting inclusive
societies. He also believes, that through the addition to their
identities, of a new language and culture, students rediscover
themselves, find a new sense of freedom, safety, and become more than
ever determined to protect human dignity. He is currently serving
at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). He was the 1st
Prize winner of the 2017 African Union Expo organized by GoAfrica
Networks, Inc in the United States.
Fran Olmos, Director of Online Communications,
OnlineCom@nystesol.org
Fran has been an ENL teacher in the Yonkers Public Schools for the last 30 years, working with children in Pre K to 8. She received her BS in Elem Ed (N-6) with a concentration in Spanish, from SUNY Oswego and upon graduating spent three years teaching grades 3, 4 and 6 in a bilingual elementary school in Mexico City. Upon returning to NY, she worked two years in the Elmsford UFSD as an ESL teacher while attaining her MS Ed in TESOL from the College of New Rochelle. Fran has been very active in NYS TESOL during the last 20 years. She started out by working on several Hudson Valley ODMACS and then was asked to become Hotel Liaison and then Registration Chair for the NYS TESOL Annual Conference. She joined the NYS TESOL board in 2002 as Membership Chair which led her to becoming 2nd VP - Conference Chair which was held in White Plains in 2007. She then became President of NYS TESOL in 2009. In 2013, Fran was asked to fill a last minute vacancy and became the 2013 Conference Chair which was held again in White Plains. Fran has also presented at NYS TESOL conferences, was Registration Chair for the 1999 TESOL International Convention (NYC) and has been NYS TESOL Publications Chair. She is also active in her school's PTA unit and has won the Honorary Life Membership Award (formerly The Jenkins Award).
TBA, Director of Publications
DirPub@nystesol.org
Lubie Grujicic-Alatriste, NYS TESOL Journal
Editor-in-Chief
New York City College of Technology, CUNY
lubie@journal.nystesol.org
Lubie works in the position of Professor of English and
Applied Linguistics at NYC College of Technology (CUNY), Department of
English. She is the coordinator of academic ESOL program, director of
the ESOL Language Lab and chair of the college-wide ESOL Task Force.
She has taught ESL courses (all levels), second language writing,
composition and rhetoric courses across CUNY, as well as graduate
courses in applied linguistics and TESOL at Hunter College, New School
University, and Long Island University. She has also presented at
conferences and symposia in the USA and abroad. With her educational
background in literature, theoretical and applied linguistics, and her
long experience teaching ESOL, composition and linguistics, she strives
to both build bridges among these disciplines and cross borders in
research. Her current research interests are related to college writing
and composition studies, classroom methodologies of teaching writing,
second language acquisition, genre acquisition and genre transfer. She
has published papers, reviews, and handbooks, and has recently edited,
and authored a number of essays in the college textbook Urban Reader
for College Writers.
Genie Smiddy, Idiom Editor
editors@idiom.nystesol.org
Mark Aaron Polger, Technology
Support Specialist
College of Staten Island, CUNY
techsupport@nystesol.org
Mark Aaron Polger is an Assistant Professor and First Year Outreach
Librarian at the
College
of Staten Island, City University of New York. Mark has been
developing web sites since 1995 and enjoys learning about
new technologies. In his role as Technology Support Specialist, Mark
provides technical support for all operations of NYS TESOL. He
manages the NYS TESOL web site, the job listings, public listserv, user
emails,
manages the online annual election, supports the planning team for the
Annual Conference and the ALWC, develops online submission forms
for all NYS TESOL conferences and events, maintains the members only
web site, resets passwords for NYS TESOL members, and helps create a
consistent design for all promotional material. His research interests
include library marketing & outreach, user experience design,
and teaching practices that promote student
engagement. He has published articles in Library Science journals on
language consistency, library web site vocabulary, library jargon, and
library marketing. Originally from Montreal (Canada), he received his
BA in Sociology from Concordia University, his MLIS from the University
of Western Ontario, an MA in Sociology from the University of Waterloo,
and a B.Ed. in Adult Education from Brock University. He is currently a
third year PhD student in Curriculum, Instruction, and the
Science of
Learning at SUNY University at Buffalo. He moved to New
York City in 2008.
