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Graduate Student, Tory Sampson, heading to Boston University
We are happy and proud to share the great news that our graduate student Tory Sampson just accepted a postdoctoral position at Boston University's Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences Department. Tory will be working primarily with Dr. Amy Lieberman and Dr. Naomi Caselli in studying the relationship between cognition, iconicity and movement properties in sign language in the classification of syntactic categories using eye-tracking methodologies. Tory's new position starts this Summer as soon as she defends her Ph.D. thesis on the grammaticalization of a certain sign resulting in a copula in American Sign Language under the supervision of Prof. Rachel Mayberry.
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Ph.D. Candidate, Maxine Van Doren, launches SLP post-bacc blog
PhD Candidate, Maxine Van Doren, started a blog a few months ago to help post-baccalaureate students navigate the Speech-Language Pathology Master's programs. "Our mission is to provide streamlined and up-to-date information on transitioning to a career in speech-language pathology. We spend hours poring through program websites and ASHA standards so you can get your information from one, centralized location."Check it out: https://www.csdpostbacc.com/ -
Linguistics Exemplary Staff Award Recipients
Christina Knerr Frink, our Chief Administrative Officer and Jeffrey Lau, our Academic HR Analyst, have both been selected for the 2021- 2022 Exemplary Staff Employee of the Year Award! This highly selective award was granted to only 15 of the 130 nominees this year. No other two staff members of the same department have been awarded and our department only has 6 staff members! This award honors staff members that have made, “exceptional contributions to the UC San Diego and San Diego communities in support of the vision to be a ‘student-centered, research-focused, service-oriented public university.’” The outpouring of appreciation from the faculty and fellow staff shows that they not only deserve this award but are also a pleasure to work with. Our warmest and proudest congratulations to Christina and Jeffrey!
If you want to know more about how they became the superstars they are, we prepared brief bio sketches of Christina and Jeffery. We also asked them to share how they feel about this award.
Christina is the Chief Administrative Officer that serves the Department of Linguistics, the Linguistics Language Program (LLP), the Heritage Language Program (HLP) and the Human Developmental Sciences Program (HDS). She started working at UC San Diego as an undergraduate student assistant for the Human Developmental Sciences Program and was hired following graduation into the Field Research Coordinator position where she had the opportunity to grow and learn through mentorship from Gris Arellano, Alia Welch Partida & Clarissa Reese. She received a promotional opportunity to serve as the lead academic advisor for the International Studies Program where she had the opportunity to learn to lead a Program with mentorship from Nancy Gilson. During this time she also had the formative experience of serving on the leadership board for the Organization for Department and Program Advisors (ODaPA) alongside Jennifer Beauchamp and Laura Majoch. In 2015 she was hired as the Student Affairs Manager for the Linguistics Department, LLP, HLP and Human Developmental Sciences Program and dove in learning the needs of the Department and Programs and finding best ways to support our community members. In 2018, she was promoted to Chief Administrative Officer and has been lucky to have such great support from everyone in the Department, Programs and the School of Social Sciences.
In response to receiving this award, Christina said the following:
If I had two words to describe my response to winning this award it would be (1) shocked (particularly because I was advocating so strongly for Jeffrey Lau to win the award!) and (2) overwhelmingly honored (okay, that's more than two words). I might have teared up when Eric shared the news. Just being nominated for this award is so very meaningful to me, and I want to sincerely thank everyone that took the time to submit a nomination. I appreciate you all and am so very thankful that I get to work with you. There are so many wonderful people that have supported me, but I would like to thank Linguistics Department Chair Eric Bakovic and Assistant Dean for the School of Social Sciences Nieves Rankin and my team past and present (Jeffrey (who also won the award this year!), Alia, Rachel, Alycia, Rula, Lily, Olivier, Mariko, Erica, Camie, Cheri and Lucie) because I would not have been able to do this without any of you. And now this really sounds like a sappy awards ceremony quote, so I will end it there! Thank you!
Jeffrey has been overseeing academic personnel for Linguistics and HDS since 2018. He was one of the principal architects who secured a grant to fund the new monitors on the 3rd and fourth floors. In addition to his regular duties, Jeffrey's been filling in as the department's fiscal and travel assistant ever since Lucie Wiseman retired and recently completed assignments in Anthropology (academic personnel) and Psychology (student payroll) during staff vacancies. He also represented the School as the HR SME for the campus Enterprise Renewal Systems Identity Management workgroup and became a member of the EVC AA HR Advisory Group.
Jeffrey told us:
I was deeply touched upon learning of the award. Not so much about the award itself, but the fact that people made the time to submit a nomination. This award is really a reflection on them and the school's sense of community.
On Thursday August 25th from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., there will be an awards ceremony to celebrate their achievements. They, along with 13 other recipients, will be honored. Nominators and fellow recipients and will be invited. Congratulations, Christina and Jeffrey!
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LSA - Meet the Authors
The LSA July edition of Meet the Authors webinar featured authors Tory Sampson and Rachel Mayberry, authors of “An Emerging SELF: The Copula Cycle in American Sign Language."
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Will Styler to give UC San Diego Legacy Lecture
Linguistics Professor Will Styler has been chosen by campus-wide student vote to give the 2022 UC San Diego Legacy Lecture. This lecture series, which was started in 2015 by the UC San Diego Scholars Society, is an annual spring-quarter event that allows one UC San Diego professor to address the student body with a unique lecture with the theme: "If this were the last lecture you ever gave, what would you want to tell the world?"
Will told us: "This is, to my mind, among the highest honors I could receive, because it comes from my students, the people best suited to appreciate the work I put into my craft as a teacher. It's wonderful when students enjoy my classes or say nice things on CAPEs, but here, they went out of their way, on their own time, to recognize my teaching, share that appreciation at the campus level, and vote me past great teachers from much larger departments. That's absolutely amazing to me, and I will always be grateful to the students who put in the time and effort to make this happen, and I will honor their hard work by bringing my characteristic combination of passion, energy, bad jokes, and 'lightly outdated' memes to this lecture, and by sharing the joys of linguistics and language with the greater UC San Diego community."
Will's students love him. Here are some of their comments."Probably the most engaging professor I've had ... He's so passionate about his topic and makes his lectures unique and fun."
"The absolute most unhinged professor, but in a good way. Loves his job and loves linguistics."
"He's a very engaging and student oriented professor. ... His lectures have definitely changed my outlook on my career."
Visit Will's website: wstyler.ucsd.edu
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Annual Conference on African Linguistics 53
The Department of Linguistics at the University of California San Diego is pleased to host the 53rd Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL 53) online on April 7-9, 2022. -
Changemaker Fellowships in Anti-Racist Pedagogy
Faculty member Emily Clem and graduate student Shai Nielson have been awarded Changemaker Fellowships in Anti-Racist Pedagogy to facilitate a review of the linguistics curriculum at the graduate and undergraduate level and the creation of resources and training opportunities to aid linguistics instructors in implementing anti-racist pedagogical practices. The first event supported by this fellowship took place on February 14, 2022 and will be a discussion critically examining the concept of "native speaker" facilitated by UCSD Linguistics alum Savithry Namboodiripad. Stay tuned for more information and for announcements of additional events and resources to come! -
Are you thinking of pursuing a career as a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP)?
Watch the session:
Prof. Ignatius Nip of SDSU’s School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences joined us to discuss the admissions process at SDSU, how students with Linguistics backgrounds can prepare for SLP programs, and to address questions. Dr. Nip is the current Interim Chair of SDSU's program, and has served as the admissions advisor for SDSU’s SLP Master’s program, so he’s the ideal person to speak with if you have any questions about the admissions process.
A panel of UCSD alums answer your questions and give advice! -
Marc Garellek promoted to Professor
Dr. Marc Garellek, who joined our department as an assistant professor in 2013 after receiving his Ph.D. from UCLA, has been promoted to Professor starting July 1, 2021. Congratulations to Marc for this major achievement in such a short amount of time! -
$400K NSF grant awarded
Sarah Creel (PI, Cognitive Science), Marc Garellek (Co-PI, Linguistics), and Will Styler (Co-PI, Linguistics) have been awarded a $400K grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate listeners' perceptions of their own speech in order to better understand the relationship between speech perception and production. Congratulations to Sarah, Marc, and Will! -
Ivano Caponigro has a new book out
Faculty member Ivano Caponigro recently published Headless Relative Clauses in Mesoamerican Languages, a new book by Oxford University Press that Ivano co-edited with Harold Torrence (UCLA) and Roberto Zavala Maldonado (CIESAS, Mexico). The book results from a 4-year project in which Ivano led a team of 21 scholars from Mexico, USA, Canada, and France. Together, they investigated the morpho-syntax and semantics of several varieties of headless relative clauses across 15 languages from 5 language families, all Mesoamerican but one. The project and the book were supported by grants from UC MEXUS-CONACYT, UC San Diego Social Sciences, UCLA Academic Senate, and CIESAS, Mexico. -
Our graduate students, faculty, and alumni present at CUNY
Several of our graduate students, faculty members, and alumni presented at the 34th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania, which took place virtually from March 4th to March 6th, 2021 (click on the title link for more details). Congratulations to all! -
New Field Research Mentorship Program for linguistics majors
The Linguistics Field Research Lab has just launched a new Research Mentorship Program. This program pairs graduate student mentors with undergraduate research assistants for a quarter to work on linguistics field work research projects. For the inaugural quarter of the program, there are 6 graduate students mentoring 12 undergraduate RAs. More information about available projects and how to apply will be posted on the program website. -
Michelle Yuan co-organizes WSCLA 25
Faculty member Michelle Yuan co-organized the 25th "Workshop on Structure and Constituency in Languages of the Americas" (WSCLA) together with Dr. Mike Barrie (Sogang University). WSCLA brings together linguists who conduct research on indigenous languages of the Americas in order to exchange ideas across theories, language families, generations of scholars, and across the communities who are involved in language maintenance and revitalization. This year, WSCLA took place virtually on May 28-30, 2021. -
Kati Hout accepts position at LinkedIn!
Alumnus Kati Hout (PhD 2020) has accepted a position as a Computational Linguist at LinkedIn, effective December 2020. Kati has been a member of our Phonetics, Phonology, and Field Work Groups, and successfully defended her dissertation, “Conspiratorial exceptionality: A case study of Mushunguli”, in February 2020. Congratulations, Kati! -
Eric Baković and Leon Bergen awarded a $400K NSF grant
Eric Baković (PI, Linguistics), Leon Bergen (Co-PI, Linguistics), and Nadia Polikarpova (Co-PI, CSE) have been awarded a $400K grant from the National Science Foundation to continue their work building a software tool to efficiently learn phonological processes directly from data. Congratulations to Eric, Leon, and Nadia!