Dear friends,



It still doesn't feel real that we are back to a 'normal' semester (minus masks!), but after two semesters and half of working mostly from home, I know many of you are excited to be back in classrooms and labs, though I know that we need to be cautious and many of the useful lessons we learned during the pandemic (such as meetings via Zoom!) will remain with us. 



I have resumed my pre-covid routine of coming to my office (4072B, LCLB) regularly, and our staff, including our wonderful Office Manager Dee Ann, will be present in their LCLB offices (except for Tuesdays, when Dee Ann will be working from home). 



We had a full and busy summer. We successfully ran another year of the Summer Institute of the Languages of the Muslim World (SILMW) virtually, thanks to the capable and experienced leadership of Eman Saadah and the teaching staff. We also ran a summer exchange program with Kyungpook National University in Korea, also virtually, during the summer. Lisa Pierce (visiting assistant professor) put together a diverse and impactful program and negotiated many administrative hurdles to make the program a success. Our summer (online) offerings also picked up relative to last summer. We offered a number of classes in ESL, as well as undergraduate level classes for Linguistics and undergraduate/graduate level classes for the ESL Endorsement.



In addition, we were successful in negotiating the hire of additional lecturers in ESL. We ran a successful search in record time, and hired 4 new ESL lecturers during the summer. We welcome Sam Bandy, Brenna Williams, Zawan Al Bulushi and Baiba Sedriks to the ESL program. 



Earlier in Spring 21, we also successfully concluded the search for a Persian lecturer and hired our own, Taraneh Sanei, who will start her position officially in Sp 22 after the completion of her PhD.



The promotion of Xun Yan to associate professor with tenure and of Mary Gathogo to Senior Lecturer is effective as of this semester. Congratulations to both! 



We also added to our affiliate/adjunct faculty ranks. Six new faculty (listed below) are starting their appointments as adjunct/affiliates of the Department this year.



Salvatore Callesano (Asst Prof, Span/Port - AY21-23)

Jenny Davis (Assoc Prof, American Indian Studies)

Pam Hadley (Prof, Speech and Hearing Science)

Julia Hockenmaier (Prof, Computer Science)

Jill Jegerski (Assoc Prof, Span/Port)

Michelle Koven (Prof, Communication)

Matt Rispoli (Assoc Prof, Speech and Hearing Science)



This Fall we welcome 38 new undergraduate students (12 freshmen in Ling BA; 20 freshmen in CS-LING BS; 6 transfers in Linguistics) and the following graduate students.



MATESL:

1.       Hana Asmaeil (Univ of Garyounis, Benghazi, Libya)

2.       Adam Farcus (UIC)

3.       Rosana Gomez Cayapu (Universidad del Valle, Colombia)

4.       Muhammet Gumus (Hasan Kalyoncu University, Turkey)

5.       Anna Krokmal (South Ukrainian National Pedagogical University, Ukraine)

6.       William Leroux (Univ of Oregon) - deferred from F20

7.       Amin Mahdavi (Univ of Applied Science and Technology, Iran)

8.       Sara Perez (UC San Diego)

9.       Ivan Luiz Rodrigues Crespo (Universidade Amhembi Morumbi, Brazil)

10.   Bianca Texeira (UIUC)

11.   Qinaerduolia, Bao (Southwest Univ, China) - deferred to F22

12.   Youran Kim (Konkuk University, Korea) - deferred to F22

13.   Wen Wang (Central China Normal University, China) - deferred to F22



LING PhD:

1.       Lilia Dobos (Salisbury State University)

2.       Majda (Masha) Layek (Univ Hassan II, Morocco)

3.       Yulin Pan (Teachers College, Columbia University)

4.       Anna Romaniuk (Univ of Kentucky)



In other news, our talk series will resume shortly, featuring a combination of F2F and Zoom talks (if you want to be added to the mailing list, please let Dee Ann know). And we are starting off the semester with the Slavic Linguistics Society meeting (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bQLDKGT2hel851KyeBlKO29hEIEZuGhbdWlT3D9Ubl0/edit?usp=sharing<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bQLDKGT2hel851KyeBlKO29hEIEZuGhbdWlT3D9Ubl0/edit?usp=sharing__;!!DZ3fjg!oXDYJnaQi_pw7VseUKkZma69NEyHs89-dVe2Uyzpns35NcTHo0K3cTDTehBHDfqayJiNFT86INI$> )  This is the first time that we are hosting this event. Thank you to Aida Talic who singlehandedly put this event together.



If you are faculty (tenure-stream or specialized), you should have received the dates for the regularly scheduled meetings this semester. Program administrators should make sure that new faculty receive these communications as well, as the relevant listserv's may not be up to date quite yet.



Because of food restrictions during covid, we will not have our usual beginning of the semester welcome event on campus (though perhaps the student organizations will put a picnic together?). I hope that we can have the end of the semester celebrations in person, circumstances permitting.



With best wishes,



James