Our Personnel
Elissa Sommerfield, Director
Elissa Sommerfield is the director of TESTPrep and has been an educator all her professional life. She is Valedictorian of Highland Park High plus Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude graduate of the Univesity of Texas at Austin, former teacher of English and American History at SMU for 6 years and at the Dallas Community Colleges for 5 years. Holding her BA from UT-Austin and MA from SMU, she conducts her Verbal and Math Skills Seminars to enhance scores on the (P)SAT, ACT, and ISEE. A member of Independent Education Consultants Associations (IECA). Sommerfield has earned her Cerfieid Educationl Planner (CEP) designation enabling her to perform advanced college, grad school, private, and professional consulting. She also tutors one-one-one in most academic areas: study skills, college and school essays, plus the TAKS, THEA, SAT I & II, SSAT, EXCEL, and ISEE. She has written four books on the SAT and co-authored a study skills guide.
Out of the classroom, Elissa Sommerfield is also a fan of symbolic literature, art, dance film and all types of music, as well as a Dallas Cowboys superfan, who uses the numbers on their jerseys as a mnemonic to remember phone numbers.
Jane Rodgers
Jane Rodgers is an English and Advanced Placement Humanties Instructor at Trinity Christian Academy and SAT critical reading and writing skills consultant. She attained her Masters of Humanities at the University of Dallas, graduated with a Bachelor's in English from UT San Antonio, magna cum laude, and is a certified to teach secondary English and history
Jane Rodgers will forever have her nose in a book as a strong student of the Classics. If she weren't so busy interpreting Herman Melville's symbols like the whiteness of the the whale, she could've continued her coaching the Trinity Christian's women's tennis team.
Kent Pendleton
Kent Pendleton is chair at Mathematics and Computer Science Departments at Trinity Christian Academy. He acquired his Masters of Engineering & Civil Engineering at Texas A&M. He's also an SAT consultant for several school districts, including Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD and Grand Prairie ISD.
Kent is the author of a book on mathematics and enjoys dance as a hobby.
Chuck Burdette
Chuck Burdette is a math instructor at Trinity Christian Academmy, has a MA & BA in math and secondary education from Evansville University and an MA in Bible Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary.
Mary Pawlowicz
Former Chair of the Mathematics Department and current SAT consultant and Advanced Placement Math Teacher at Ursuline Academy, a consultant at the Texas Education Agency, with an MA from Columbia University and MS in Math from Adelphi University.
Mary devotes much of her time to fine art (especiallly classical paintings) and in the off-season, tours art exhibits all over the world, and sometimes uses Mathatmical Design (i.e., origami) as a teaching aid for her students.
If you want to contact our staff, or register for a place in our classes, please call 214-363-7043. Refer to this page for additional information.