Who We Are
Our teaching staff includes full-time faculty and administrators, affiliated faculty, and graduate student instructors. All of our staff have graduate level training in linguistics, TESOL, and/or speech-language pathology. We look forward to working with you.
For more information on how to join our team, please visit our Get Involved page.
English Language Programs Full-Time Staff
Julia Moore, PhD
Senior Director, English Language Programs
Phone: 847-491-5776Email: jmm@northwestern.eduEnglish Language Programs Affiliated Instructors
Lisa Del Torto is an Associate Professor of Instruction in The Cook Family Writing Program, where she teaches undergraduate seminars and collaboratively with faculty from the McCormick School of Engineering in the Design Thinking and Communication (DTC) program. Del Torto's research activities intersect with her teaching and service work and combine her interests in writing pedagogy and sociolinguistics, including equitable writing assessment, writing pedagogy, linguistic discrimination and justice, open educational resources, critical thinking, ethnographic methods, intercultural interaction, and cultural adjustment. Dr. Del Torto has been a key leader and curriculum developer in ELP Foundations and its precursor, the International Summer Institute, and has taught group courses in the Integrated Academic Skills program and Linguistics 480, 'The Language of Learning and Teaching'.
Lizzie is a Public Speaking/Communication Coach at Unscripted Speech, Sales Enablement Learning Specialist at Google, and Graduate Student at New York University. She started her career with Google in 2017. Over the last 5+ years, she has built on her experience across acting, improvisation, speech language pathology, and marketing to form a unique practice for effective communication skills and preparing for success. She began coaching in 2019, and has worked with a wide range of career paths, including sales leaders, engineers, UX designers, product marketers, and entrepreneurs. Lizzie specializes in working with individuals who are non-native English speakers and are looking to build their clarity and confidence to better connect with their audience.Dorina is a speech, language and hearing scientist and data analyst specializing in quantitative and computational projects. She has technical expertise in statistical modeling, data visualization and application building and domain expertise in cognitive psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, acoustics and hearing science. Her research interests revolve around understanding and modelling speech processing in realistic environments, degraded by various sources pertinent to the environment, talker and listener. She has been teaching in English Language Programs since Fall 2022.Anna is an affiliate instructor in English Language Programs with a master's degree in linguistics from Northwestern University. She oversees our Supported Online Speech and Language Training courses (LING 483), and is an instructor for LING 482 and our Instruction and Practice small groups. Her recent research areas of interest are rhythm and intonation in speech perception and production as well as interactions between language and music. While working towards her bachelor’s degree at the University of Oregon she completed the Second Language Acquisition Teaching (SLAT) certification and was a tutor and conversation partner for two years at the University’s American English Institute. She enjoys outdoor activities such as hiking and rock climbing, playing piano, and acquiring as many plants as possible.Momoko Takahashi is a postdoctoral fellow at Feinberg School of Medicine. She has a BSc from Loyola University Chicago in biophysics with minor in mathematics and chemistry, and a PhD in communication sciences and disorders from Northwestern. As a former English as a Second Language student, she has experienced the majority of obstacles non-native English speakers go through and has been working with international PhD students regarding English acquisition, life as a STEM PhD student, and life in the US in general since 2016. In her free time, Momoko likes to read, cook, write, play video games (RPG), and play violin. Graduate Student Instructors & Interns
Alex Baines is a Graduate Intern in English Language Programs in academic year 2023-24. He is a native of the United Kingdom and a fourth-year student in the Interdisciplinary PhD program in Theatre and Drama. He also holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Oxford and an MA in Text and Performance from Birkbeck, University of London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. His research examines the community function of reconstructed heritage-performance spaces such as Shakespeare’s Globe in London, particularly in contexts of Britain and empire. Alex is also a trained English as a Foreign Language Teacher and before returning to academia taught in various locations around the world, including Cambridge (UK), Moscow, rural south-west England, and Shanghai, alongside writing and work in the theatre. At Northwestern, Alex is affiliated with the British Studies cluster and is the recipient of a Mellon Interdisciplinary Cluster Fellowship. He is currently learning Hindi-Urdu.
Alison is a third-year PhD student in Cognitive Psychology. She has Bachelor’s degrees in Neuroscience and Spanish Studies, and a Master’s degree in Psychology. She also has experience tutoring middle school students in English as a second language. She is currently studying how language boosts infant cognition and how infants begin to learn from nonnative languages. In her free time, she enjoys reading, hiking, and playing the piano.Xena Amro
ELP Graduate Intern (Fall 2023)
