Contributing Authors to the 2022 Issue

Naoko Akai-Dennis, PhD

Assistant Professor, English Department
Facilitator, One Book Program
Bunker Hill Community College

Naoko Akai-Dennis is Professor of English and Facilitator of the One Book Program at Bunker Hill Community College.  She holds an M.A. in American Literature from Kobe College in Japan, an Ed.M. in Teaching of English from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in English and Education from Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Science.  Her research interests are translanguaging, intersubjectivity in classroom, and teaching reading and writing.  In her spare time, she enjoys watching anime and reading manga.  She has wanted to learn Tango and she is determined to do so sometime soon.    

Cynthia Milonas Cummings

Professor, English Language Learning Department
Professor of American Culture, English Department
Bunker Hill Community College

Cynthia Milonas Cummings is currently an adjunct professor of English Language Learning and American Culture at Bunker Hill Community College. She holds a M.A.L.S. in Social Sciences from Hollins College, a TEFL certificate from Georgetown University, and a M.A. in Applied Linguistics with an emphasis on Teaching English as a Second Language from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She has worked in education for over thirty-four years at various colleges, universities, and language programs. Outside of teaching, Cynthia enjoys spending time with her husband, and two children.

Jennifer Burke Grehan

Professor, English Department
English Language Learning Department
Bunker Hill Community College

Jennifer Burke Grehan is adjunct professor of English and English Language Learning at Bunker Hill Community College. She also teaches at Urban College of Boston, where she serves as the English Language Learning Specialist, and works as Enrollment Coordinator at The Immigrant Learning Center in the City of Malden. The only thing that Jennifer loves more than bacon and beach days are her children, Lucy and William.

Christina Lambert

Senior Director of Student Success, APIA Scholars
Inaugural AAPI Academic Coordinator &
AAPI Success Coach, Advising and LifeMap
Bunker Hill Community College

Christina Lambert currently serves as Senior Director of Student Success with APIA Scholars. In 2017, Christina became the inaugural AAPI Academic Coordinator and AAPI Success Coach of the AANAPISI grant at Bunker Hill Community College. In these capacities, Christina designed and implemented the initial ELL Success Coaching model of the new ELL Program, later refining it to include ACE student mentors trained in providing targeted support for first-level ELL students. Christina currently lives in Oakland with her wife and is an avid hiker, reader, and soccer player in her free time.

Lindsay Naggie 

Interim Director, Learning Communities
Professor & Former Chair, English Language Learning Department
Co-leader, AANAPISI ELL Design Team
Bunker Hill Community College

Lindsay Naggie currently serves as the Interim Director of Learning Communities and has been a faculty member in the ELL Department at BHCC since 2008. She holds an M.A. in T.E.S.O.L. from Boston University and B.A. in English Literature and Secondary Education. She is a poet, print maker and returned Peace Corps volunteer. When not at work, she snowboards, swims, bicycles and hikes in Michigan, Idaho, Hawaii, Alaska and other far–flung, nature-dense corners of the world with her spouse and extended family/friends.

Maria Kathleen N. Puente 

Professor, Department of Behavioral Science
Project Director, AANAPISI Grant
Bunker Hill Community College

Maria Kathleen N. Puente earned an MA in Counseling Psychology and successfully defended her doctoral dissertation in Clinical Psychology in the Philippines. Early in her professional career, Maria engaged in teaching, research, and clinical practice.  She also managed internationally grant-funded initiatives that supported underprivileged Filipino children, families, and communities.  At Bunker Hill Community College, Maria has served in many key leadership roles as Department Chair, Interim Academic Dean, and Chief Editor of two accreditation reports. Maria finds joy in meditating regularly and is happiest when she spends time at the beach with her husband Alex and their son Francis.

Jennifer Valdez 

Professor & Chair, English Language Learning Department
Bunker Hill Community College

Jennifer Valdez is a professor and the current chairperson of the English Language Learning Department at Bunker Hill Community College. She holds a B.A. in English from Fordham University, an M.A. in English from Boston College, and an M.A. in TESOL from SIT Graduate Institute. She has worked in education for twenty years in various schools, colleges and universities, and community-based organizations. She lives in the Merrimack Valley with her family and reads and runs whenever possible.

Aurora Belina Bautista, PhD

Professor, Department of Behavioral Science
Activity Coordinator, AANAPISI Grant
Bunker Hill Community College

Aurora Bautista is Professor of Behavioral Sciences at Bunker Hill Community College and recently served as the Activity Coordinator of the AANAPISI Grant 2016-2021. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of the Philippines, an M.A. in Anthropology at New School University, and a Fulbright Doctoral Enrichment in Economic Anthropology at Boston University.  Dr. Bautista has developed learning community courses and integrates ethnography of work, Asian American themes, and place-based learning outcomes in her sociology and cultural anthropology courses.  These pedagogical approaches provide students with real world experiences in collaboration with community partners. 

Jeff Ellenbird

Professor, English Language Learning Department
Co-leader, AANAPISI ELL Design Team
Bunker Hill Community College

Jeff Ellenbird is Professor of ELL at Bunker Hill Community College.  Originally from California, Jeff’s passion for teaching comes out of community organizing and community-based teaching in San Francisco.  He then got his Masters in TESOL at San Francisco State University and later served as a Fulbright Fellow in Chile.  Jeff started teaching at BHCC in 2015 and helped lead the 5-year AANAPISI overhaul of the ELL program.  Outside of teaching, he loves cooking, playing music, making fires on the beach, and getting around with his partner and two daughters.

Zaida Ismatul Oliva

Executive Director, Chica Project
Former Interim Director, Dual Enrollment & Early College Program, Chelsea High School, and Former Senior Special Programs Coordinator, ACE Mentor Program
Bunker Hill Community College

Zaida Ismatul Oliva served as Special Programs Coordinator of the ACE Mentor Program before transitioning to Interim Assistant Director for Dual Enrollment and Early College Program at Chelsea High School for Bunker Hill Community College, and more recently, as Executive Director of the Chica Project, a non-profit organization focused on the empowerment of young women and girls of color. Zaida earned a M.Ed in Higher Education Leadership from Florida Atlantic University and a B.A. in Latin American & Iberian Studies from the University of Massachusetts-Boston. Before making the leap to Higher Education, Zaida served in non-profit organizations for over 10 years where her love for equity and social justice was formed and is now at the center of her work and practice. On her off time, she enjoys spending time with her family and pets, listening and dancing to music, advocating for her community, and traveling.

Cherry Lim

AANAPISI Project Director, UMass Lowell
Former AAPI Academic Success Coordinator & Member, Multilingual Advising Group, Advising and LifeMap
Bunker Hill Community College

Cherry Lim served as Academic Success Coordinator and member of the Multilingual Advising Group in the Office of Advising & LifeMap at Bunker Hill Community College. Previously, she served as the AAPI Academic Coordinator and the AAPI Success Coach under the AANAPISI grant and provided support for ELL students through classroom-based success coaching. Cherry also designed and piloted the first AAPI student events programming, a model that has since become a template for student affinity group programming at the College. In January 2022, Cherry transitioned to becoming the Project Director of the AANAPISI grant at UMass Lowell, and remains in touch with her colleagues at BHCC. Outside of work, Cherry enjoys knitting, crocheting, and catching up on all sorts of sports and television programs.

Ashley Paul

Professor, English Department
Bunker Hill Community College

Ashley Paul has been teaching in the English Department at Bunker Hill Community College since 2014, when she moved from Florida to Boston with her family. Ashley holds a B.A. in English from the University of Alabama and an M.F.A. in Fiction from Florida State University. In addition to teaching, she enjoys spending time with her family, baking sweet treats, writing creatively, and decorating for Halloween.

Alan Shute 

Professor, English Language Learning Department
Co-leader, AANAPISI ELL Design Team
Bunker Hill Community College

Originally from Greater Boston, Alan Shute earned an M.A. in TESOL at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. After teaching overseas in Seoul and Barcelona, he started teaching as an adjunct at Bunker Hill Community College in 1991, eventually obtaining a full-time position as the liaison to Adult Education Transitional programs in Chinatown, which also included developing self-paced, individualized ESL courses in the Center for Self- Directed Learning.  As a full-time faculty member of the ESL (now ELL Department) since 1996, he has participated in the implementation of many grants but none as comprehensive as the AANAPISI grant. Besides teaching, he enjoys traveling, recently biking across the U.S.