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• Chrishon Blackwell is the Program Director of the Gateway Scholars Program at Brandeis. Her academic accomplishments include earning a masters' degree in Organizational Leadership, two Bachelor's degrees in International Business Management and Political Science, and a Teaching English as a Second Language certification. Chrishon has traveled to Mexico, France, Spain, and England. She has lived in Texas, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island, and California in the United States as well as British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta in Canada prior to moving to Boston. Her ESL experience began in Canada as a member of many international social programs at the University of Western Ontario and continued when she participated in a study abroad program to Nice, France. She gained extensive experience working in the ESL industry at a private language school in California.
  
  
• Vino Murugesan serves as Academic Specialist for the English Language Program and Gateway Scholars Program at Brandeis University. She holds a B.Ed. (Hons.) TESL degree from Exeter University (UK), an MA in English Literature from the University of Malaya, and a joint MA in English Literature and Women’s and Gender Studies from Brandeis University. She is currently completing a PhD dissertation in English and American Literature, also at Brandeis. She has served as University Writing Seminar instructor and as Teaching Fellow for various courses as part of her doctorate degree. She has also served as a tutor for the English Language Program for several years.  Vino has had extensive international experience in the field of education, whether as commercial enterprise, government policy or cutting-edge academic theory. She has worked with an independent international publisher as an ELT editor and marketing consultant, having previously served for some years as a lecturer at a teacher education center under the Ministry of Education, Malaysia. As a teacher educator, she researched, planned and taught both in-service and pre-service teacher education programs. She designed these programs based not only on education theory but the practical reality of ESL situations in various places. She has presented several papers at international conferences and has had several ELT articles published. She co-authored an EFL resource book published in 2007 in tandem with an accompanying teacher-training program. Vino is a firm believer in the value of continuous professional development, and she endeavors to keep abreast of current developments in both education and literary criticism.

• Shelby Bleiweis '04 is the Program Administrator of the English Language and Gateway Scholars Programs.  Her previous role was as the Senior Program Associate of the Office of Global Affairs here at Brandeis. Shelby received her masters degree in Higher Education Administration from Boston College's Lynch School of Education. Recently, she has been the Newsletter Administrator and a Graduate Center Assistant at Boston College, and an Operations Intern in the Office for Campus Life at Tufts University. Shelby graduated from Brandeis cum laude in Sociology and History, with a minor in Education Studies. In 2003, she had the opportunity to study at the University of Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain. Shelby has also traveled abroad in Italy, Canada, and Morocco.