Sheila MacKechnie Murtha joined the ELP as a lecturer in 2006. Having completed a double major in oral communication and English, Ms. Murtha has found a perfect fit teaching Conversation and Culture. With an MA in Communications, she began a diverse career in education at William Paterson University, where she taught Speech and Interpersonal Communication. Additionally, she has consulted for corporations, and provided presentation skills workshops for a child-abuse prevention non-profit in NYC. As her family grew (and moved), Ms.

Amy Nichols has been teaching in the English Language Programs at the University of Pennsylvania (ELP) since September 2004. Before coming to the ELP, Amy lived in Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia, where she taught English in a program financed by the International Monetary Fund.

In addition to her impressive teaching resume, Amy also has extensive business experience. She served as a teaching assistant at The Wharton School, worked as a consultant for a software company and held a managerial position at General Electric.

Robert Bacon joined the part-time instructional staff at the ELP while still a student in Penn's Graduate School of Education. Before coming to Penn, he supervised language learning instruction for the Summer Institute of Linguistics' Field Training Course in Texas and Mexico. His teaching career began in linguistics as a graduate teaching assistant in articulatory phonetics,language learning, and literacy development at the Universities of Washington and Oklahoma, again for SIL. Later he taught EFL at Taiyuan, Wuhan, and Jinan in China.

Christy Shea has been teaching in the ELP since 2004 and became a Language Specialist in 2008.  After graduating from Houghton College in 1998, Ms. Shea began teaching English and library research at Nassa Theological College in Tanzania, East Africa. When she returned to the US in 1999, she taught high school ESL and American history in New York State. 

Robyn Turner joined the ELP as a lecturer in 2004 and became a Language Specialist in 2008. She has taught a variety of courses in the Intensive Program, Conversation and Culture program, and online courses such as Writing for Professional Purposes and Writing the GRE/GMAT Essay.

Heather Williams, Language Specialist, joined the ELP in 1997. Currently she divides her time between the Intensive Program, in which she has taught core courses as well as a wide variety of intermediate and advanced elective courses, the International Business Communication Program and the Executive Communication Program. She has also coordinated the Goldman Sachs English for Information Technology program and the Summer Institute for English Language Educators from South Africa.

Jack Sullivan became Manager of Intensive and General English Programs in 2008. He first joined the ELP in 1999 as a part-time lecturer. He then worked as a teaching assistant while he earned an MS in TESOL at the University of Pennsylvania; he joined the full-time staff as a language specialist in 2002. Before arriving at Penn, Mr. Sullivan taught English to children for five years in Omiya City (now Saitama City), Japan.

Mary F. Smith joined the ELP in 2005 as a Lecturer, became a Language Specialist in 2007 and was promoted to Senior Language Specialist in 2008. Previously she taught ESL in the Intensive Programs at Drexel University and Harcum College. Her experience also includes combined ESL/Spanish at the middle school level in Norristown, PA, and volunteer ESL/literacy teaching for immigrants in Upper Darby and West Philadelphia. These activities followed 11 years of teaching French and Spanish in public secondary schools in Massachusetts.