ACT-ESL: About Us>VCU Staff
Dr. Seonhee Cho
Principal investigator/project director (PI), Dr. Seonhee Cho, is assistant professor in the department of Teaching and Learning at VCU. She specializes in Language and ESL education. Dr. Cho’s primary responsibilities of the project include hiring, supervising, and coordinating project personnel; program planning and curriculum development; recruitment of participants; leading the summer institute; providing supervision and training to technical assistants; budgetary expenditures; yearly and final report writing; and overseeing general daily operation of the grant.
Leslie Bohon
Project specialist, Leslie Bohon, has many years of experience in working in international contexts and teaching ESL students, both at university and high school level. Ms. Bohon works with a project team to plan, coordinate, and administer the project. Her responsibilities include assisting with recruitment of summer institute participants, planning and implementing day-to-day activities of the summer institute, supervision/mentoring of the technical assistants, organizing annual teaching demonstration fairs, coordinating classroom observations, participating in end-of-year follow-up/re-training sessions, and facilitating data collection.
Barbara Gibson
Co-principal investigator (Co-PI) Barbara Gibson, the Associate Director of The Literacy Institute at Virginia Commonwealth University, provides administrative oversight for grant- and contract-funded projects with budgets. Ms. Gibson’s primary responsibilities of this ACT-ESL project are overseeing budget planning, monitoring daily expenditures, and annual reporting of budget expenditures to the funding agency.
Terry Franson and Terry Hathaway
Terry Franson is the CCPS ESL Specialist and Secondary Liaison. Terry Franson's and Terry Hathaway’s work together to connect the ACT-ESL project and CCPS teachers and administrators. The specific responsibilities of the senior personnel include recruiting and providing data on LEP students, promoting the Annual Teaching Demonstration Fair, and developing professional learning communities.
Dr. Gina Pannozzo
Project evaluator, Dr. Gina Pannozzo, is assistant Professor in the Foundations Department of VCU and has expertise in both qualitative and quantitative data analysis. Dr. Pannozzo is responsible for planning and coordinating project evaluation activities; developing all formative and summative assessment instruments; facilitating and supervising data collection, entry, and analysis; providing periodic feedback to the principal investigator regarding status of project implementation; maintaining and storing data; and annual reporting.
Dr. Valerie Robnolt
Dr. Valerie Robnolt is an assistant professor in Reading Education in the department of Teaching and Learning at VCU. Her research is focused on assessment and instruction of reading comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency. Dr. Robnolt's primary responsibilities to the grant is to provide expertise in the reading content area, academic literacy in the Summer Institute curriculum development, and participate in other Professional Learning Community activities.
Technical Assistants
Technical Assistants (Content Specialists):Technical assistants’ duties include assisting summer institutes, making classroom observations, and providing one-on-one coaching to summer trainees. The technical assistants are MJ Weaterford (English), Joel Dexter (Social Studies), Mary Jo Dailey (Science), Barbara Lange (Math).