2019 Award Recipients

Awards Sponsored by CATESOL Education Foundation

Rick Sullivan Stipend
Sponsored by the CATESOL Education Foundation
Recipient: ​Yiyuan Zhang, Pepperdine University
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With a passion for learning and teaching English, I, as an ESL educator from China, carry my personal beliefs in education.  I believe in the essentiality of encouraging learners to produce the target language along with their L1 cultural and social values.  I understand that making changes to language education takes tons of efforts, but I firmly advocate the need for cultivating learners’ language output skills through various engaging technology-based activities. 
David E. Eskey Memorial Award
Sponsored by the CATESOL Education Foundation
Recipient: ​Nicole Brun-Mercer, University of California, Berkeley
Nicole Brun-Mercer holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff. She has taught English in the United States, Switzerland, France, Russia, and Guinea and she currently works in Oakland and Berkeley, California. Her research interests include corpus linguistics, lexicogrammar, reading, and composition. Her publications have appeared in a variety of edited collections and journals, including TESOL Quarterly and The CATESOL Journal.
Ron Lee Technology Award
Sponsored by the CATESOL Education Foundation
Recipient: ​Stephanie Thomas, San Diego Community College District
Stephanie Thomas has over thirty years of experience as an ESL instructor. She has taught all levels of ESL and currently teaches Advanced Grammar online. Stephanie enjoys harnessing the power of technology to engage learners. In 2015, Stephanie was awarded the Community College Teacher Development Award. An avid lifelong learner, Stephanie often enrolls in courses and explores new tools to enhance her technology skills.

CATESOL Level Professional Development Awards

IEP Level Professional Development Award
Sponsored by ELS Learning Centers
Recipient: ​Raymond Carson, UC Irvine, DCE
Raymond Carson, MA Education TESOL, is a native English speaker with 15 years of experience teaching English as a second language. His first three years of teaching were in Barcelona, Spain primarily teaching and developing curriculum for in-company business English classes.  His last twelve years have been spent teaching students of diverse backgrounds in IEP programs at UCLA, UCI, and CSU Long Beach; credit writing courses in the Humanities department at UCI; and multi-skill adult English courses at Irvine Valley and Coast Community Colleges.
Community College Level Professional Development Award
Sponsored by National Geographic Learning
Recipients: ​Ann Marcella Fontanella, City College of San Francisco
With over 30 years of experience ESOL, Ann Fontanella has teaching experience in the United States and abroad. As a community college instructor at City College of San Francisco for 20+ years, Ann has taught diverse populations in credit and non-credit programs. She has been a teacher trainer, has mentored student teachers and has conducted intensive summer programs. Ann has presented at CATESOL conferences and has served as a CATESOL Conference Program Chair. She has also presented multiple times at national and international TESOL Conventions. She strives to “bring the class to the community and the community to the class” through different activities in and outside the classroom.
College/University Level Instructor Award
Sponsored by Alliant University
Recipients: ​Renae D. Betten, UCR Extension, International Education Programs
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Dr. Carla R. Liu, California Baptist University
Renae Betten is an Academic Programs Coordinator of International Education Programs at UCR Extension and part-time professor at CSUSB. She has also taught as an IEP Instructor at California Baptist University. In 2017, she assisted in the research project as the classroom teacher for Dr. Liu's dissertation.
Carla Liu is an Assistant Professor of English/ TESOL and has also served as IEP Director at California Baptist University. In May 2017, she received her Ed.D. in TESOL from Alliant International University. This article is an overview of the research she conducted with the aid of her colleague.

CATESOL Level Student Awards

Secondary Level Student Essay Contest
Sponsored by National Geographic Learning
Recipient: ​Michael Cho, JSerra Catholic High School
My name is Michael Cho. I am a freshman at Jserra Catholic High School. My dream is to become a robot scientist. My hobbies are making robots, playing basketball, and watching NBA highlights. My goal is to go to UCLA because it is a famous engineering university and the RoMeLa Lab is there. Studying English is hard, but I won’t give up and will keep trying because I love English.
IEP Level Student Essay Contest
Sponsored by ELS Learning Centers
Recipient: Yumi Sato, Orange Coast College
My name is Yumi Sato and I am from Tokyo, Japan. In high school, I worked as a web writer. The most impressive work I've been a part of was when I worked with Disney Animation Studio. I am studying English to communicate with people who have different backgrounds and cultures. After I graduate from Orange Coast College, I will transfer to a university in New York to study arts.
Community College Level Student Essay Contest
Sponsored by Townsend Press
Recipient: ​Hiba Estrada Munguia, Mira Costa College
Hiba Estrada was born in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico. She finished her bachelor’s degree in Communications with excellence in her thesis and was granted with a scholarship to be used in Barcelona, Spain. She moved to Oceanside, California to attend at Mira Costa College to improve her English skills, so she could follow her dreams to move abroad and study a master’s degree in Digital Marketing.
College/University Level Graduate Student Award
Sponsored by Alliant University
Recipient: ​Jennifer Michelle Evans, CSU, Northridge
Jennifer Evans, UCLA (B.A., Global Studies) and CSUN (Teaching English as a Second Language) alumna is an ESL teacher and tutor from Los Angeles. Jennifer has given presentations and written papers about corpus linguistics and L2 pedagogy at CATESOL and CSUN. She will return to CSUN this fall to study Speech-Language Pathology (M.S.).