Whasc Profile: Rachel Walker

1) Coming to Santa Cruz represents a return for you, as well. How have things changed since you were last here?

In the department, the biggest change has been the people. There are many faculty who arrived since I was a student here, and the staff have changed, and, of course, the students. It’s a great opportunity to get to know new people and learn about new threads of research. There also seems to be a lot of new wildlife on campus: a lot more deer and coyotes than I remember, and way more turkeys.

2) In light of the times, how has it been to adjust to life back in the department?

It’s been an adventure! Things have of course been limited by the pandemic, but it was terrific to be able to teach in person in the fall and to resume again just recently this quarter. Teaching in person has helped me to get to know a lot of the students in the department, both the graduates and the undergraduates. I’m delighted about the reopening of the Stevenson Coffee Shop, because it’s a great meeting place nestled among the redwoods and I really missed it when it was closed.

 

3) What’s on the horizon for the coming year – be it plans for research, for travel, or anything else?

On the research front, I’m working on analyzing acoustic data we collected for Ladin, a minority Romance language spoken in the Italian Alps. This research will help us to understand properties of the syllable structure of Ladin and pave the way for our future investigation of stress in the language. I’m also planning to continue investigating the temporal structure of liquids in syllable rhymes in different languages. On the recreational side, I’ve got lots of hikes and exploring around the area in mind when I get some free time!