Category: Alumni News

Nathan Sanders earned the PHD from UCSC in 2003 with a dissertation on Opacity and Sound Change in the Polish Lexicon. Nathan was recently persuaded to send in the alumnus report below:

I’m finishing up my fourth year as a visiting assistant professor at Swarthmore College, a wonderful institution with long ties to Santa Cruz linguistics. I’ve been teaching courses across the curriculum: phonetics/phonology, syntax, semantics, historical linguistics, and my popular course on linguistic typology and constructed languages. I’m in the process of developing an exciting new upper-level course on advanced linguistic methodology and the history of linguistics. I’ve also been engaging in a variety of research projects: machine translation of Tuvan and statistical models of vowel harmony with my colleague K. David Harrison, and the phonetics of sign languages with my colleague Donna Jo Napoli, a topic that blossomed from a merger of my interest in phonetic functionalism with her interest in sign language linguistics. We have an upcoming paper with our student Becky Wright in the next issue of Language, “On the linguistic effects of articulatory ease, with a focus on sign languages”, which explores some of the ways that reduction of physical effort in casual conversation affects the usage of arm and hand joints in signing. Donna Jo and I are now working on a new paper on the role of the moments of inertia of the torso in shaping lexical patterns of symmetry in two-handed signs. And I’m planning a return to Santa Cruz later this summer to see everyone and revive my work with Jaye Padgett on mathematical models of vowel inventories.

Tristan Thorne graduated with the BA in Language Studies in Spring 2008 and has pursued an interesting career path focused on language ever since. Tristan was recently persuaded to write to WHASC to give an account of where his studies have taken him since 2008 and what his current projects are.

After graduating in 2008, I taught English to adults in a small town in Andalucía, Spain for one year. Studying Spanish as part of the BA degree in language studies was a huge help in acclimating to life there. The following year I applied to and was accepted into the JET Program, and taught English to high school students in a rural farming town in southern Japan for two years. During that time, I began to realize that my love for teaching and language, which I discovered soon after taking an introduction to linguistics course at UCSC, would benefit by returning to school.

Now, I’m about to graduate with an MA in applied linguistics from Teachers College, Columbia University in New York. For my master’s project, I conducted a survey on name use practices and beliefs of East Asian adults living in New York City with something of a phonology-oriented lens. I wanted to know, for example, how these individuals change their non-English names when introducing themselves to English speakers, such as name shortening, changing syllable stress, dropping tones, and changing sounds to conform to English phonological constraints (more information on the project can be found here). I’m really excited to be given the chance to present some of the material at an international conference in Rhode Island in August.

As phonology has been one of my favorite areas in linguistics, it seems fitting that I teach a pronunciation course for ESL adults here at TC. I’m also an instructor at an English school in midtown Manhattan. During the summer, I’ll work as an adjunct faculty instructor at the American Language Program at Columbia’s main campus, and also be a teacher coach for the TESOL Certification Program at TC. In the future, I may pursue a PhD with an emphasis on exploring the relationships between second language acquisition and identity.

Alumna Taylor Bell, who earned the MA in 2012 following a double major in Language Studies and Anthropology, will enter the PhD program in Anthropology at UC Davis next Fall. Taylor plans to work in the area of Linguistic Anthropology.

Selene Tsoi graduated from UCSC with the MA in Linguistics in 1994. She is spending the current academic year at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and WHASC took advantage of the opportunity to catch up with her.

WHASC: Selene, you earned the MA in 1994 with a thesis on the phonology of Cantonese. Could you fill us in on your career since then? What have you been doing?

Selene:
I have been working for the Government in Hong Kong as a member of the Administrative Service. We are responsible for policy development, as well as interfacing with the community, legislature and media. Rather than being assigned to a particular subject area, we are regularly rotated to different bureaux. My past portfolios included human rights, immigration policy, language education (marginally related to linguistics!) and teacher and school awards schemes. I was half-way through my three-year posting to the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in New York during the events of 911. I then spent a few years in the Chief Executive’s private office, around the time of the SARS epidemic. I found myself on the team responsible for accounting and bankruptcy policy and corporate law reform during the financial crisis a few years ago. Most recently, I worked on civil service benefits.

Continue Reading OPTIMALITY THEORY AND PUBLIC POLICY MAKING: ALUMNA SELENE TSOI REVEALS ALL

We reported a little over a year ago that MA alumna Tami Schuyler had published a short story (Ugly) in the literary journal Cutbank, in Volume 78, 2013. It was recently announced that Tami’s story had been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The prize is given once a year by the Pushcart Press and it honors the best poetry and short fiction published by small presses in a given year. Winners of this year’s award will be announced in May.