Faculty/Staff

Chelsea is an adjunct lecturer for both the IECP and the ESL/EAP program in Applied Linguistics. She graduated from Penn State in 2017 with a master’s degree in TESL, where she focused on language policy in Morocco. Her experience includes seven years of working in student-support roles at Penn State in the Office of Global Programs and Smeal College of Business, as well as three years teaching English in Meknes, Morocco. She is very passionate about languages, and knows French and Moroccan Arabic. She has only recently begun teaching again and is thrilled to be back in the classroom, where she hopes to grow both professionally and personally.

Publications:

Makoni, S. & Abdelhay, A. (2020). Contributed chapter entitled “Berber Language Policy in Morocco” in Language Ideologies, ethnicities, and semiotic spaces of power. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon-Twine.

Tianyu has been a teaching faculty member at the Intensive English Communication Program (IECP) at Penn State since 2018. He is now serving as an Assistant Teaching Professor at the IECP in the department of Applied Linguistics. He graduated from Penn State in 2018 with a master’s degree in TESL. His studies focused on pedagogy and methodology, language research, courses and teaching materials design, and cultural diversity. His specialty is designing pragmatic teaching materials and meaningful and interesting activities to meet his students’ real needs. He has more than 10 years’ experience in ESL & EFL teaching and education. His current research interests include the application of relevant methods in ESL teaching to enhance students’ interest and confidence, internationalization in higher education and cultural diversity and inclusion of English language institutes.

Mary MacDonald was a full-time instructor at the IECP from 1996-2010 and is thrilled to return as an essay coach and adjunct instructor. She has also been a full-time instructor at Ohio University and Chubu University in Japan. Mary has over 30 years of experience in teaching all skills and levels in ESL, as well as teacher training, curriculum development and English for business purposes. She is a certified TOEFL and TOEIC rater. Mary holds her Master’s Degree in Education, specializing in TESOL, from the University of Massachusetts and is certified to teach high school ESL and English.

Nikki Mattson has been a faculty member at the Intensive English Communications Program (IECP) at The Pennsylvania State University (PSU) since 2009. She currently serves as the Coordinator of Strategic Initiatives for the IECP in addition to being a Teaching Professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics. She holds her M.A. in Linguistics and a Certificate of Graduate Study in TESOL from the University of South Carolina. She also holds a DELF (diplôme d’études en langue française) from Université Marc Bloch, Strasbourg, France. Nikki is dedicated to supporting campus internationalization efforts as well as global engagement in the classroom, on campus, and beyond. Nikki is a co-founder and advisor for the PSU Living-Learning Community, the Global Engagement Community. She also serves as a Global Learning Coordinator (GLC) for PSU’s Experiential Digital Global Engagement (EDGE) Program. Her research interests include intensive English program oral placement test validation, evaluating computer-assisted language learning (CALL) usage in second language (L2) classrooms, and internationalization in higher education.

Selected recent scholarship:

• Cherkassov, D., Mattson, N., and Childs, S. (2020, September). The mentoring process: Enriching professional growth for English language teachers and teacher educators. Presentation at the 9th ICBCB: Global Trends and Values in Education, Virtual Conference, Kaskelen, Kazakhstan.

• Minkoya, V., & Mattson, N. (2018, November). Blogging together with different motivations: Exploring IEP classroom activity systems. Paper presented at TESOL NY, Albany, NY.

• Mattson, N. (2018). Reporting on a University Class Observation: IEP Student-Created Videos. Presentation at the TESOL 2018 International Convention, Chicago, IL.

• Kimura, D., Mattson, N. and Amory, M. (2017). A Conversation Analytic Approach to Oral Placement Test Validation: Attending to Vertical and Horizontal Comparisons. TESOL Journal. doi:10.1002/tesj.335

• Mattson, N., Sudaholc, S. (2017). Interpreting Student Feedback About A CALL Program Through Activity Theory. Presentation at the TESOL 2017 International Convention, Seattle, WA.

Lorie began her career in education as an elementary classroom teacher and was drawn to school districts with high ESL populations, both on the Navajo reservation in Arizona and in a multilingual community in Houston, Texas. Following a trip to Turkey, she fell in love with the country and decided to make it her home for 13 years, 11 of which were spent teaching in the intensive English program at Bilkent University in the capital city of Ankara. While at Bilkent, she earned the Cambridge University DELTA qualification (Diploma in English Language Teaching to Adults) and, in 2016, earned a master’s degree in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). Upon returning to her home state of Pennsylvania, Lorie spent several years teaching English online before transitioning back into the classroom with the IECP as both an adjunct lecturer and writing coach. Lorie has 24 years of experience in education and is fascinated by sociolinguistics, phonology, and connected speech, but most of all, she is passionate about drawing speech out of reluctant learners by creating a supportive classroom environment in which all students feel safe and welcome.