Below is a photograph of the 2019 Commission on English Language Program Accreditation (CEA). CEA is a specialized accrediting agency recognized by the United States Department of Education for the accreditation of postsecondary English language programs and institutions. I’m seated in the front row, second from the right. To my immediate left is the former Executive Director of CEA Mary Reeves, who is one of my mentors. To my right is Connie Lee, who served as the Chair of the Commission in 2021 and is currently an officer in the United States Peace Corps. 2019 was the last year of my four-year term as an elected Commissioner and the year I served as Chair of the Commission. Serving as a CEA Commissioner was one of the most impactful and rewarding parts of my professional career. I have been lucky to be able to continue my work with CEA since my term as a Commissioner ended. Since 2021, I’ve worked with CEA as a staff analyst reviewing and writing reports to support the agency’s work.
I’m originally from a very small town in the coalfields of southern West Virginia but have lived in Miami since the late 1990s. I work in the administration of a multisite ESL program for adult learners with instructional sites in Florida, Utah, and Virginia. My current work focuses on curriculum development, faculty supervision and support, providing professional development to faculty and staff, and regulatory and accreditation compliance. I have also maintained a parallel career as a professional translator during the past twenty years or so. I went through a brief but intense poetry phase in 2011 but I mainly translate documents from Spanish, French, and Latin into English and specialize in educational, literary and legal texts, as well as documents in the humanities and social sciences.
I taught ESL, Spanish, Latin, and test preparation for several years before becoming an educational administrator. My first “official” teaching experience took place in the fall of 1990 with the Madison House Migrant Aid program (the name of the program has changed but it still exists). I’m now in my tenth and final semester of the Ed.S. program with an ESL area of emphasis (I took the “slow path” by enrolling in one course every semester since I started the program in January of 2021). I know that I am, like all of you, very excited about this final step in what has been for me a nearly three and a half year journey. I have research interests in applied and educational linguistics, language change and variation, and African-American English. I’m especially interested in the intersection between English learners and African-American English in urban contexts (such as here in Miami) and hope to base my final project on that topic. Beyond work and school, I spend my free time on tropical gardening, boxing, competing in obstacle course races, exercising in general, reading, and spending time with friends.