Guest Panelists
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Forrest Chisman, Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy (CAAL), NY
Forrest Chisman is Vice President of the Council for the Advancement of Adult Literacy and has been an independent consultant in the fields of human resource development, health care, and philanthropy. From 1988-1997, he was President of the Southport Institute for Policy Analysis, and prior to that he was Director of the Project on the Federal Social Role. From 1977-81, he was Deputy Administrator for Policy of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Previously he was Director of The Aspen Institute's Program on Communications and Society, and Senior Program Officer of the John and Mary Markle Foundation. He received his BA from Harvard and his doctorate from Oxford. He is the author of numerous books, articles, and reports on a wide range of public policy issues.
Tom Mechem, GED State Chief Examiner, Commonwealth of MA
A lifelong teacher, Tom Mechem spent the 12 years prior to coming to the DOE as coordinator of and teacher in several highly successful GED preparation programs in the Boston area, most recently at LARE training in Chelsea MA. Appointed GED State Chief Examiner in 2001, Tom has been charged with overseeing the operation of the 32 official GED test centers in Massachusetts and with improving the passing rate of GED testers. To this end he has developed and delivered workshops and presentations for teachers and program directors as to precisely what skill sets are needed to pass each of the five GED tests. These workshops are based on statistical information received from the GED Testing Service, on the profiles of Massachusett's non-passers, on input from teachers in the field, and on the latest research.
Wendy Quinones, Community Learning Center, Cambridge, MA
Wendy Quinones teaches at the Community Learning Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts and at Urban College in Boston. In over 20 years of teaching ABE learners at levels from intermediate through college, she has continually faced the issues of students transitioning from ESOL into ABE. She was a teacher-researcher in the three-year Adult Multiple Intelligences study through NCSALL and has given many trainings on this topic. She is also very interested in using distance learning for professional development in ABE. Wendy holds the Massachusetts ABE Teacher License.
Cynthia Zafft, National College Transition Network, Boston, MA
Cynthia Zafft is the Senior Advisor and former director of the National College Transition Network (NCTN) at World Education in Boston. The NCTN was created in 2004 to connect practitioners, researchers, and policy-makers interested in developing and supporting the emerging field of transition-to-college and postsecondary education for learners in adult education. Currently, Cynthia is the Curriculum Director for the Health Care Learning Network (HCLN; http://www.hcln.org), an online curriculum for frontline workers and community members interested in preparing for one of the many challenging health care career college programs. As part of a model of support, online course work in reading, writing, math, and science is combined with tutoring and career coaching to help employers "grow their own" nurses and other health care professionals. Cynthia is currently completing her doctoral education in Higher Education Administration at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. Her dissertation topic is transition to postsecondary education, particularly focusing on "college readiness" for adults.
