This is our third 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.
Congratulations are in order to faculty and staff who have been promoted or received awards in the past year. Aida Talić has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. Associate Professor Jonathan Dunn was named a Conrad Professorial Scholar. Senior Lecturer John Kotnarowski received both the LAS award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching for Instructional Staff, and the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Linguistics office manager Natalia Sakhartova received the Marita Romine Distinguished Service Award from SLCL. Associate Professor Jonathan Dunn obtained a PURSUE LAS grant to improve undergraduate research opportunities in our department; thanks to this grant, several undergraduate students in Linguistics have the opportunity to participate in the new Linguistics Undergraduate Program in the Fall 26 semester. Assistant Professor Anna Mendoza (together with Ph.D. student Elif Varlik and undergraduate student Zahra Ghadeer) has received a Campus-Community Compact Award for a literacy project with the Refugee Center. Please read more about the accomplishments of our faculty in the Faculty section of this newsletter.
We recognize the many achievements of our students. Two Ph.D. students received prestigious dissertation completion fellowships for the 26-27 AY: Martine Gallardo from SLCL, and Mingyue Huo from the Graduate College. Ph.D. students Paul De Nijs and Amelia Tighe both received dissertation grants from the journal Language Learning. Ph.D. student Elif Varlik received a AAAL Distinguished Service and Engaged Research Graduate award, and a number of students received internal and external conference awards and grants. On March 16, 2026, our annual open house for admitted Ph.D. students included, for the first time, a graduate student research showcase by our current Ph.D. students; we hope to make this a recurrent event! On May 6, 2026, we held our annual Year-End Graduation and Awards Celebration, in which twelve student awards given out across eight award categories. For the third year in a row, the Linguistic Student Organization (LSO) also honored student winners of LSO awards. Please read about the accomplishments of our students in the Students section of this newsletter.
The 2025-2026 academic year was another active year for academic events in the department. Our students organized the 7th annual Sociolinguistics Symposium (SOSY), held on April 4, 2026. We also hosted a major international conference, the 33rd meeting of the Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference, on August 7-9, 2026. For more department news, please see the Department section of this newsletter.
We have welcomed two new faculty to the department this year. Anastasia Tsilia has started as a new assistant professor specializing in semantics/pragmatics. Amy Atiles, our own recent Ph.D. recipient, has started as a new teaching assistant professor of TESL and Linguistics. Please see the New faculty section of this newsletter for more on our new faculty. Along with these new faculty, we welcome many new students to the department: 43 new undergraduate majors, 10 new MATESL students, and 10 new Ph.D. 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
