Our Leadership

Board Members - Communications

Camille Embus Perez, VP Communications
VPCommunications@nystesol.org

Camille Embus Perez has been at St. John's University since 2011, working as both an instructor and administrator for The Language Connection and as an adjunct professor for the credit ESOL program. Before working at St. John's, she taught in West Africa as an elementary teacher for 2 1/2 years, which is where her passion for working in the ESOL field began. She holds a B.S in Elementary Education from The University of Tennessee and an M.S. in TESOL from St. John's University.

 

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).

Adrienne Lew, Director of Publications
DirPub@nystesol.org

Adrienne Wai Man Lew is an Ed.D. candidate in Applied Linguistics at Teachers College, Columbia University, specializing in second language acquisition. Her research interests include L2 input, interlanguage fossilization, and the L2 acquisition of tense and aspect. Adrienne is a former Managing Editor of Working Papers in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at Teachers College, Columbia University, a peer-reviewed web journal, and has been an invited reviewer for several other professional publications and organizations in the filed. She is currently a publicity co-chair for the 35th Second Language Research Forum. Adrienne holds an M.A. in TESOL from Teachers College, Columbia University, and was an English Language Editor at Pearson Education Asia Limited prior to that. She has been a Master Teacher in the Community English Program at Teachers College, Columbia University, and has taught ESL at LaGuardia Community College, Bronx Community College, and the Chinese-American Planning Council.

Marisa Aiello, Idiom Co-Editor
editors@idiom.nystesol.org

Marisa Aiello is currently teaching English as a New Language (ESL) for a K-8 district in Suffolk County, New York. Marisa has taught English as a New Language for over 19 years. She has created and implemented curriculum for all levels of ENL; kindergarten through college. Her goal is to always support the mainstream teacher and help create a learning environment that English Language Learners can thrive in. She is proud to represent her district as a consortium member of The Long Island Regional Bilingual Education Resource Network (L.I. RBE-RN formally BETAC) Marisa holds a BA from SUNY Stony Brook, a Master's in TESOL from C.W. Post, and a Master's in Staff Development from the College of New Rochelle. Her New York State Teaching Certifications are in TESOL, Social Studies, SBA, and SDA.

Genie Smiddy, , Idiom Co-Editor
editors@idiom.nystesol.org

Genie Smiddy has been tutoring or teaching undergraduate and graduate students writing since 2005. During this time she has taught in the intensive English program for St. John’s University as well as in Hunter College‘s freshman composition and introduction to literature courses. Very early on, this work sparked her interest in the unique experiences of ELLs in American universities, particularly in how they respond to writing and the revision process. She holds both a B.A. in Art History and an M.A. TESOL from Hunter College.

Lubie Grujicic-Alatriste, NYS TESOL Journal Editor-in-Chief New York City College of Technology, CUNY
editors@journal.nystesol.org

Lubie works in the position of Associate 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.

Mark Aaron Polger, Technology Support Specialist
College of Staten Island, CUNY, ASA College
techsupport@nystesol.org

Mark Aaron Polger is an Instruction/Reference Librarian at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York and an Information Literacy instructor at ASA College in New York City. In addition to being a librarian and teacher, 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 pursuing his PhD in Curriculum, Instruction, and the Science of Learning at SUNY University at Buffalo. He moved to New York City in 2008.