Meet the Faculty & Staff

Dr. Beth Smith

Dr. Beth Smith is the director of Boston-based Pathway Programs at Northeastern University. In her role, she oversees advising and programming of both NU Immerse and Global Pathways. She works closely with faculty and staff to ensure connectivity between program curriculum, advising, and co-curricular activities. Beth completed her master’s degree in international law and diplomacy at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and she received her doctoral degree in international higher education administration from Northeastern University. Her research focused on the transition of Chinese students to American higher education through an extended summer bridge program. Beth also teaches in the Global Studies and International Affairs program within the College of Professional Studies and has led sections of NU Immerse discussion groups.

Jeff Yu

Jeff is the Assistant Director, International Engagement of Global Pathways. He brings both his professional and personal experiences to his work. Jeff supervises a team of Global Student Ambassadors (GSAs) who support our new students’ transition experiences. He also coordinates an array of social events to assist international students to bridge the cultural difference in the U.S.
Jeff earned his master’s of education, higher education at Merrimack College. He is also a Northeastern alum.

Jeff has a great deal of experience and knowledge helping and supporting international students deal with transitional challenges. Jeff is excited to meet all future Global Pathways students at orientation.

Jessica Dilliner

Jessica Dilliner is an Academic Advisor for the Global Pathways program at Northeastern University. She is passionate about helping students realize their potential, and contributing to both their personal and academic evolution. In so doing, students are better prepared to take on the challenges the Global Pathways program entails, as well as those they’ll experience in their graduate degrees. Jessica earned her master’s degree in nonprofit management and has an extensive background in higher education, having held various roles at Northeastern over the last two decades.

Dr. Ilka Kostka

Ilka is an associate teaching professor in the NU Immerse and Global Pathways Programs in the College of Professional Studies at Northeastern University, where she teaches English to international students. Her research and pedagogical interests include source use in academic writing, technology in language teaching and learning, and service-learning with international students. She is an active member of TESOL International Association as managing co-editor of SLW News, the official newsletter of the Second Language Writing Interest Section. She is also a member of the Editorial Review Boards of TESOL Journal and The Electronic Journal for English as a Second Language. She completed her PhD in bilingual education at New York University and has taught in the United States and in China.

Dr. Balazs Szelenyi

Balazs Szelenyi received his PhD from UCLA in 1998 and teaches classes on philosophy, globalization, sociology and history for Northeastern University. His first major area of research was on urban history and urban development. Based on that research he published his first book, “The Failure of the Central European Bourgeoisie” (2006) and an article on the dynamics of urban development in the early modern period in the American Historical Review. His second area of research was on the origins and causes of genocide, for which he received fellowships from the National Endowment of Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright Commission, and the German Marshal Fund.

In 2003 he was named a Fulbright New Century Scholar for his research on genocide and the Holocaust. He has published articles in the academic journals Past and Present, Theory and Society, Social History, and the Austrian History Yearbook. Balazs has also co-edited a book called “Cores, Peripheries and Globalization” (2011). Currently Balazs is finishing his book on the Holocaust called “From Minority to Übermensch”, and he is developing a new interest in the impact of technology on society and the moral dilemmas involved in the evolution of transhumanism.

Dr. Edward Miller

Edward H. “Ted” Miller is associate teaching professor at NU Global in the College of Professional Studies at Northeastern University. He is a historian of American politics, political culture, and capitalism. His first book, “Nut Country: Right-Wing Dallas and the Birth of the Southern Strategy” (University of Chicago Press, 2015) argues that while the first scholars of American conservatism wrote off the far right as paranoid and suffering from status anxiety, and more recent scholarship writes them out in favor of emphasizing moderate conservatives, ultraconservatives played a vital role in the development of the modern GOP. Dr. Miller has published articles in the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and Cities in American Political History. He is currently at work on his second book, “Sugar Daddy: A Life of Robert H. W. Welch” about the founder of the John Birch Society.

Dr. Veronika Maliborska

Dr. Maliborska is an assistant teaching professor in the NU Immerse and Global Pathways Programs. Her research interests include second language writing, the learning potential of writing, and teaching pronunciation, prosody, and vocabulary to international teaching assistants. Her recent research focused on the pedagogical potential of individual conferences in a composition course for international students. She is a member of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages and the American Association for Applied Linguistics, where she presents her research findings.

Previously, Dr. Maliboska was a graduate instructor in the English department at Purdue University. She taught writing courses in the ESL Writing and ICaP programs; worked as an instructor, tutor, and rater in the Oral English Proficiency Program, preparing international graduate students from various majors to become teaching assistants; and developed ESL content for the Purdue OWL website. She was also an instructor at the EF Englishtown’s online English program and a graduate instructor and writing tutor at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Dr. Cristine McMartin-Miller

Cristine McMartin-Miller is an associate teaching professor in the NU Global program at Northeastern University. There, she teaches such courses as ESL writing, ESL speaking and listening, and linguistics for teachers of English as a second language; she is also a program coordinator of the International Tutoring Center. Dr. McMartin-Miller’s research interests include second language writing feedback, second language writing assessment, and writing tutorials. She holds a PhD in English with a concentration in Second Language Studies from Purdue University.