Staff Profiles
We take pride in the expertise, training, and experience of our staff. Their dedication and involvement has put quality and excellence at the heart of our organization.
Casey Marks
Chief Executive Officer
Casey was previously chief operating officer at the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) in Chicago. He trained as a psychometrician and holds a PhD in education from the University of Chicago. In the fifteen-plus years he has spent in nonprofit management organizations, he has gained considerable experience in the areas of certification and credentialing. Casey specializes in a number of areas, including the development and administration of computer-based testing.
Cris Betts
Chief Operating Officer
Cris is responsible for the development and production of tests and for customer service. After ten years in teaching, examining, and academic management, he has worked in language assessment since 2001. Before joining CaMLA, he was an assistant director at Cambridge ESOL, where he managed staff working in test design and delivery. He holds a degree in languages from the University of Oxford and an MA in applied linguistics from the University of Leicester.
Barbara Dobson
Professional Partnerships Director
Barbara oversees CaMLA examination program teams and also contributes to the development of strategies and projects to promote CaMLA and its services. She has taught writing to both native and nonnative English speakers at the university level and published in the areas of language testing and English for academic purposes, as well as presented her assessment-related research at various international conferences. Among her presentations and workshops have been several designed for classroom teachers on topics such as how to assess writing, how to evaluate tests, and how to interpret test scores. Barbara is an author of the ESL reading textbooks Choice Readings and Reader’s Choice (now in its fifth edition).
Jayanti Banerjee
Research Director
Jayanti oversees research and development activities for all of CaMLA’s international testing programs. Prior to joining CaMLA, Jayanti worked at Lancaster University, UK, where she managed one of their TESOL master’s degrees, taught graduate-level courses, and supervised master’s- and PhD-level projects. More recently she has delivered workshops on the assessment of listening, research methods, and qualitative approaches to data analysis. Her research activities have included a validation study of the ELPAC test, a test of aviation English designed by EUROCONTROL, as well as a project documenting linguistic markers of the different levels of foreign language proficiency. She has published in the areas of language testing and English for academic purposes and presented papers at a number of international conferences.
Natalie Nordby Chen
Assessment Director
Natalie Nordby Chen directs activities that create, support, and strengthen CaMLA programs. She leads a team of outstanding test developers and serves on the senior management team. She previously founded a successful assessment-focused consultancy developing tests and educational products; conducting item writing and rater training workshops; serving on professional review panels; and mapping test specifications to the governmental standards. She spent a decade on the test development staff at ETS, and she taught ESL/EFL in university and intensive programs in the United States and Taiwan. She holds an EdM from Rutgers University.
Amanda McConville
Operations Director
Amanda oversees test administration, finance, multimedia, human resources, and facilities for CaMLA. She has a masters in accounting and is an associate CPA member. During her career she has had expanding responsibilities in human resources and operations. Prior to working for CaMLA, Amanda's experience included primarily accounting and financial roles in both private and public hospitals as well as academic institutions.
Mark Chapman
Assessment Manager
Mark’s current duties include the development of test items for a wide range of CaMLA products. In addition, Mark serves as a senior examiner for the Graduate Student Instructor Oral English Test and creates training materials for essay raters. Prior to moving to Michigan, Mark worked as an ESL instructor in Japan. He taught English for academic purposes at Hokkaido University and taught business English with Hitachi Ltd. He has an MA in TEFL from Birmingham University in the UK.
Fabiana Macmillan
Assessment Manager
Fabiana is responsible for developing the content of language assessments by writing and reviewing test items across all skill areas, as well as by developing test specifications. She has an MA in TESOL, along with a PhD in applied linguistics focusing on the assessment of reading. She has over eight years experience teaching ESL in Brazil and Canada, and has been involved in ESL instructional materials writing and language test development since 2002.
Ildi Porter-Szucs
Assessment Manager
Ildi develops test items across all skills and for all CaMLA testing programs. She oversees and serves as a senior evaluator for the Graduate Student Instructor Oral English Test. She brings nineteen years of ESL and EFL teaching experience to all ages in a variety of instructional settings, of which thirteen years were spent in community colleges. Ildi holds a BS in hotel management, travel, and tourism; an M.Ed. in TESOL; and a PhD in higher, adult, and lifelong education.
Rachele Stucker
Assessment Manager
Rachele develops items for all testing programs, trains freelance item writers, and participates in pilot testing efforts. She also serves as a senior evaluator for the Graduate Student Instructor Oral English Test. Rachele received a BA from the University of Missouri and an EdM from Harvard University. She spent twelve years working in universities and educational publishing houses in East Asia. In the United States, she has experience running ESL programs for adults and has been involved in graduate business school admissions.
Katie Coleman
Assessment Specialist
At CaMLA, Katie participates in the training of speaking examiners, coordinates Young Learners efforts, compiles high-quality assessments, and serves as an evaluator for the GSI OET. She has demonstrated a commitment to the field of applied linguistics by serving on the organizing committees for the Language Testing and Research Colloquium and Eastern Michigan University's TESOL 2011 Graduate Student Forum. Katie’s experience as an educator ranges from leading a graduate-level ESL course to teaching ESL and reading to children and adults through Literacy AmeriCorps. Katie holds undergraduate degrees in psychology and French from Penn State University, and an MA-TESOL from Eastern Michigan University.
Barbara Dame
Assessment Specialist
Barbara is responsible for the quality, validity, and reliability of assessments produced by CaMLA. Prior to joining CaMLA, she taught ESL grammar, vocabulary, reading, and academic English courses to university students. Barbara has been involved in various related volunteer projects as a local community literacy council member, a local international student conversation group member, a planning member of the 33rd Language Testing and Research Colloquium (LTRC), as well as an organizing member of the Michigan Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (MITESOL) 2012 Conference.
Jessica O'Boyle
Assessment Specialist
Jessica is responsible for key aspects of quality assurance in test design and test construction. Her core responsibilities include participation in speaking test development, training and monitoring of constructed response raters, and test form compilation. In addition, Jessica has served as a test proctor and certified speaking examiner. She has demonstrated a commitment to the field of language education by presenting at TESOL and the Graduate Student Forum, and by volunteering to teach ESL in the community. Jessica received a BA from the University of Central Florida in hospitality management and will soon receive an MA-TESOL from Eastern Michigan University where she has gained experience teaching both undergraduate and graduate students.