Liberato Silva dos Santos is a PhD student in the Applied Linguistics and Technology program at Iowa State University (ISU) and works as an English Writing Consultant in ISU’s Center for Communication Excellence (CCE). Liberato has been selected for an eight-week Summer Pre-Doctoral Research Experience program at Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, NJ taking place in the summer of 2018. As an ETS SPRE intern, Liberato will assist ETS researchers who work on the National Assessment of Educational Progress program by addressing a key subject or technical need within NAEP or K12. He will assist his research mentor with investigating a business research issue specific to the project and will produce beginning plans for an innovative business-driven project. Liberato will also present his work in a public forum at ETS and gain exposure to research and work within a testing and assessment organization.

“My current research and future dissertation is on language assessment and testing, so I could not be happier having the opportunity to be a research intern at ETS. I credit part of my success to the high quality, straightforward, "eagle-eye" input and feedback I received from fellow CCE writing consultants in a series of on-site and online consultations I attended. The combined feedback I received from consultants Angelica, Mitch, Angie, and Idée made my job application materials go from OK to excellent. My thanks also go to Sarah Huffman and Elena Cotos for providing such quality training to all CCE writing consultants and for bringing together such a diverse group, coming from different departments and fields of expertise. I believe this diversity was also crucial in enhancing my job application materials. So, this is a big thank you to all of you writing consultants and supervisors at the CCE who helped me get here.”