Alumni return to work, study

Two outstanding and busy ELI alumni joined the ELI staff while also matriculating as graduate students at the University of Delaware. Here are their stories.

	Andres Mancera

An engineering feat
Andres Mancera knew he had something to offer ELI students.

The 25-year-old first came to ELI from Colombia in 2002. After studying in the intensive program for four months, he went home to Bogota, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 2003. He returned to the University of Delaware in February 2004 to begin his master’s degree in the same field. When offered a position at ELI in September ’05 as an orientation assistant, he grabbed it.

“I like the place,” he said, “and I felt I could help the students in the same situation I was when I came here.” In his quiet, smiling way, he reassured new students and let them know, as he remembered from his student days at ELI, that “everyone is friendly here.” Finishing all his work for a master’s degree in August 2006, Andres moved to California, where he is working as an electrical engineer for a technology company in San Jose.

Turning the teaching tables
It’s not often that a former ELI student morphs into an ELI tutor.

Julian Shayeb

Teaching is second nature to outgoing Juliana Shayeb, who started learning English at the age of 9 in Saõ Paulo, Brazil, and began teaching it at 17 to young children at a local language school. It was always her dream to come to the United States to study English. So when she met ELI admissions officer Kelly Galvin at an international college fair in Sao Paulo, she decided to come to the University of Delaware.

Juliana arrived in Delaware in March 2005 and spent three sessions at ELI, graduating with honors. Then, in September of 2005 she began working on her master’s degree in teaching English as a second language.

At the same time she was also hired as an ELI tutor. Her previous experience as a student on the other side of the table from tutor Bonnie Dawson inspired her to have fun as well as work hard with her tutees.

In the summer of 2006, Juliana received a graduate assistantship to work at UD’s Center for Disability Studies, where she plans and implements workshops for families of people with disabilities. After her graduation with a master’s in teaching English as a second language in May 2007, Juliana plans to teach in the United States.