Jerome Paris, PhD, is a special lecturer in the department of humanities at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Under his guidance, the English as a Second Language (ESL) program has flourished. His commitment goes beyond serving the university’s international student body. He collaborates with NJIT’s Educational Opportunity Program, with the New Jersey School of Architecture to help create a first-year composition course for architecture students, with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in evaluating essay portions of the qualifying exams for civil engineering PhD students, and with the Office of International Faculty and Students to provide greater assistance for graduate students facing cultural as well as linguistic challenges.

Paris has received funding from the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education for ESL and Professional Education. In 2003, the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education invited NJIT to host a Statewide Higher Education English as a Second Language conference. Paris, serving as chair of the New Jersey Higher Education ESL/Bilingual Administrators Council, took primary responsibility for the conference. NJIT and He hosted a similar conference again in October 2005.

Paris received the Board of Overseers Public and Institute Service Award in 2006. He has been honored by the New Jersey Educational Opportunity Fund board of directors with an EOF Champion Award, which recognized his “dedication, advocacy, outspoken support and …multiple years of effective direct participation with EOP students.”

He received his PhD from Cornell University and his MA from Columbia University.