About Me

Luis Javier Pentón Herrera has taught Spanish and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) at the K-12 and university levels. He served as the 38th President of Maryland TESOL from 2018 to 2019. He currently serves as Assistant Professor at the University of Warsaw in the Faculty of Modern Languages and The Institute of Applied Linguistics, and as the Coordinator of the Graduate TESOL Certificate at The George Washington University.

Previously, Luis earned the rank of Sergeant while serving in the United States Marine Corps (USMC) as well as worked in administrative and legal roles for both the USMC and the Department of Defense. He holds three master’s degrees—two of which were completed with 4.0/4.0 GPAs—and earned a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership: Reading, Language, and Literacy. Two of his professional accolades include the ‘30 Up and Coming Emerging Leaders in TESOL’, awarded by TESOL International Association in 2016, and the J. Estill Alexander Future Leader in Literacy Award, awarded by the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers (ALER) in 2018 when his dissertation was chosen as ALER’s 2018 Outstanding Dissertation of the Year.


Here is a video of Dr. Penton presenting at the Maryland TESOL’s 40th Annual Conference (2020) along with Dr. Custodio and Ms. O’Loughlin.

Presentation Title: Educating SLIFE: What We Have Learned