This is our second annual departmental newsletter. The goal of the newsletter is to celebrate significant milestones among our students, faculty and staff during the past academic year, welcome new members to the department, and share exciting plans for the coming academic year.
This year sees a major change to the admin team for the department. I am honored to be starting my first term as Head, joined by Professor Silvina Montrul as the new Associate Head and Associate Professor Jonathan MacDonald as the new Director of Graduate Studies. Huge thanks are due to Professor James Yoon and Professor Rakesh Bhatt for all their years of work as the Head and Associate Head of this department. The department would not be where it is without their excellent and caring leadership.
Several faculty were promoted during the past year: Xun Yan has been promoted to Professor; Yan Tang has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure; Eman Saadah has been promoted to Teaching Professor; and Suzanne Franks has been promoted to Teaching Associate Professor. Susan Faivre has a new title of Director of ESL. Many of our faculty have received recognition for their scholarship, teaching, leadership and service over the past year. Associate Professor Jonathan Dunn was selected for the 2025-26 Emerging Research Leaders Academy facilitated by the Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute. Teaching Professor and Director of the Less Commonly Taught Languages Program Eman Saadah became a recipient of both the 2025 LAS Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and the 2025 Campus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. ESL Assistant Director and Senior Lecturer Cassandra Rosado was appointed the LAS Dean’s Fellow for the Academy for Educational Excellence. Our faculty have continued to receive external grant support for their research: Professor Silvina Montrul received a 2025-26 Fulbright award to conduct language acquisition research in Brazil, while Professor Xun Yan and Associate Professor Yan Tang have been awarded a grant from the Language Training & Testing Center to develop an AI-assisted scoring system. Numerous other faculty have received recognitions and awards for their work; please read more about the accomplishments of our faculty in the Faculty section of this newsletter.
We recognize the many achievements of our students, who have done exceptionally well in winning fellowships and grants. Three PhD students have received prestigious dissertation completion fellowships for 2025-26: Huiying Cai and Joshua Dees (from SLCL) and Chae Eun Lee (from the Graduate College). Huiying Cai also received a Language Training & Testing Center Joint-Funded Research Grant, while PhD student Amy Atiles received a doctoral dissertation research improvement grant from the National Science Foundation. On May 7, 2025, we held our annual Year-End Graduation and Awards Celebration, in which 24 student award recipients were recognized across nine award categories; this was also the second year that the Linguistic Student Organization (LSO) honored student winners of LSO awards. Please read about the accomplishments of our students in the Students section of this newsletter.
This year’s end-of-year ceremony on May 7 also included two other celebrations in addition to the student awards. One was a retirement celebration for Professor Peter Lasersohn; tributes from colleagues and former students celebrated his 29 years in the department. The other was a surprise celebration for Professor James Yoon on the occasion of his stepping down after 15 years as Department Head, with colleagues and students thanking him for his leadership. Please see the articles “We Bid Farewell” and “A New Chapter Begins” in this newsletter.
The 2024-2025 academic year was another active year for academic events in the department. Our students organized the 17th annual Illinois Language and Linguistic Society (ILLS) conference, along with the 6th annual Sociolinguistics Symposium (SOSY), held concurrently on March 7-8, 2025. We also hosted a major international conference, the 29th Mid-Continental Phonetics and Phonology Conference (MidPhon 29) on October 4-5, 2024, and a specialized workshop, Nominals and Nominalizations in Korean and Beyond, on May 9-10, 2025. For more department news, please see the Department section of this newsletter.
We have welcomed several new faculty to the department over the past year. Scott Nelson, who was with us a visiting assistant professor last year, is now continuing as a new assistant professor specializing in phonology/phonetics; for more about Scott, please see the article “Getting to Know Scott Nelson” in this newsletter. Dorothy Maweu, who was previously a lecturer in the ESL program, has also moved to a new position, as Instructor and Director of the Sub-Saharan Languages Program and Coordinator of Swahili. And we welcome Lydia Newkirk as a visiting assistant professor specializing in semantics/pragmatics. Along with the new faculty, we welcome many new students to the department: 35 new undergraduate majors, 13 new MATESL students, and 11 new PhD students.
I look forward to an exciting academic year, to more department events, and to the continued accomplishments by our students and faculty. It is a privilege for me to serve the department.
Tania Ionin
