Advisory Boards

Dr. Deborah Short

Deborah J. Short, PhD., has served both as an external evaluator for the Bridges project and, more recently, as a reviewer of the Bridges LL SIFE curriculum. She is the Director of Academic Language Research & Training and provides professional development on sheltered instruction and academic literacy worldwide. As a former Division Director at the Center for Applied Linguistics, she co-developed the research-validated SIOP Model for sheltered instruction and directed research on English language learners for the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Rockefeller Foundation, and U.S. Department of Education. Previously, she taught English as a second/foreign language in New York, California, Virginia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Her publications include professional journal articles, SIOP Model books, and ESL textbooks for National Geographic Learning.

Brenda Custodio

Dr. Brenda Custodio is retired from Columbus City Schools in Columbus, Ohio where she worked as an ESL classroom teacher at the middle and high school level.  To meet the needs of the predominately refugee-background students in Columbus, she helped to create a secondary newcomer program (Columbus Global Academy) and was instrumental in adding sheltered content courses for secondary level English learners for the district.  She served as a building administrator at Columbus Global Academy until her retirement.

Dr. Custodio received her master’s and doctorate degrees from The Ohio State University and currently serves as an adjunct professor for both Ohio State and Ohio Dominican Universities in their TESOL endorsement programs.  She is past president of Ohio TESOL and has served as chair for both the Refugee Concerns Interest Section and the Secondary Schools IS of TESOL, International.  She received a travel grant in 1998 to visit Australia and study their ESL programs, has visited and worked with teachers in Mexico and Japan, and worked one summer in China preparing undergraduate students to attend graduate school in the United States.  In 2019 and 2020, she visited Rwanda with the refugee resettlement organization, where she conducted workshops for public school teachers.  In November of 2020, she was selected by the US Department of State to develop a series of virtual workshops for Rwandan teachers on best practices for teaching reading in English to be offered remotely in coordination with local teacher trainers. She has written three professional books:

• How to Design and Implement a Newcomer Program by Allyn and Bacon (2010)
• Students with Interrupted Formal Education: Bridging Where They Are and What They Need by Corwin Publishing in 2017 (Co-authored with Judith O’Loughlin)
• Supporting the Journey of English Learners with Trauma (co-authored with Judith O’Loughlin) by the University of Michigan Press published in 2021

Jian Liu

Jian Liu (刘健) is the Training Specialist in the Office of Contracting at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Jian was the Associate in Bilingual Education in the Office of Bilingual Education and World Languages (OBEWL) at the New York State Education Department (NYSED), leading different projects that support all stakeholders in English Language Learners (ELLs) and Multilingual Learners (MLs) community. Before that, Jian was an Assessment Manager in the Office of Assessment at NYC Department of Education, led different projects that relate to the assessments for NYC public schools, particularly the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT). Jian is also an adjunct Assistant Professor at New York University School of Professional Studies. At an earlier stage of his professional career, Jian was a high school bilingual math teacher in Brooklyn.

Jian earned his B.A. from City College of New York (CCNY) in Pure Mathematics, an M.A. from NYU-Steinhardt in Teacher of Mathematics 7-12 and was a Math for America 2011 Fellow. In 2015, Jian earned his M.S. Ed. in Bilingual Childhood Education from City College. Most recently, Jian received his M.S. Ed. in Educational Leadership and Administration at The College of Saint Rose in summer 2019.

Judith O’Loughlin

Judith B. O’Loughlin, M.Ed., is an independent education consultant, with over thirty years of experience as an English, ESL, and special education teacher. She has taught ESL at the K-12 and adult education levels, as well as a graduate adjunct in two university TESOL endorsement programs. Her work for school districts, departments of education, universities, and OELA grant programs has focused on standards-based and English language development program design for newcomers and SIFE, instructional strategies, differentiated instruction for multilingual and bilingual special education learners. She has been a teacher-trainer and consultant for NJ City University, the Center for Applied Linguistics, The Ohio State University, and SOKA University in Tokyo, Japan. Her publications include The Academic Language Accelerator, (Oxford University Press), Students with Interrupted Formal Education:  Bridging Where They Are and What They Need, (Corwin/Sage), and Supporting the Journey of English Learners After Trauma (UMich Press).  The latter two publications co-authored with Dr. Brenda Custodio. Ms. O’Loughlin was recognized as one of TESOL’s “50 at 50” leaders in the field of English language teaching, CATESOL Sadae Iwataki Service Award, NJTESOL-NJBE Leadership Award, and Seton Hall University’s Multicultural Education Teacher of the Year.