Giving in Action: Linguistics
Linguistics
Gifts from friends, alumni and the community allow CU Linguistics to serve our state and local communities and continue to enhance our national and international stature. We place our graduates in industry, in community-based programs and in outstanding academic jobs.
According to Academic Analytics’ Scholarly Research Index, we rank 7th among US linguistics programs—above some elite institutions. We happen to be among the most innovative practitioners of empirical linguistics, training undergraduate and graduate students in methods from geospatial mapping to machine learning, to ethnography to experimental phonetics. We document endangered languages and help Native and Indigenous communities develop heritage language curricula, protecting a critical cultural legacy. Our Buff Buddies help children and adults through community-based literacy programs.
Your gifts help us hire and retain leading faculty and scholars, fund research and conference activities of our outstanding graduate students, support a diverse body of undergraduate students, and do research that helps communities and advances knowledge about language. See our Donate site for 9 key initiatives in which your gift can advance our research and training missions and shed light on properties of language.
Laura A. Michaelis, Chair of Linguistics
Judge is currently pursuing a bachelor's-accelerated master's degree in linguistics at CU Boulder after receiving a bachelor of arts in linguistics and speech, language and hearing sciences, and a minor in computer science in May 2022. Judge is the 2022 Jacob Van Ek Scholar Award winner, won the David Rood Award in 2021, LURA in 2020 and 2021, and the Jacob Van EK Scholar Award, which is considered one of the College of Arts and Sciences' highest honors given to students for academic achievement and service.
Suchocki is currently pursuing a master's degree in computational linguistics after receiving a bachelor of arts in linguistics and a minor in information science in May 2022. Suchocki is a 2022 David S. Rood Award winner.
Reynolds is currently pursuing a bachelor's-accelerated master's degree in linguistics and a bachelor's degree in anthropology, a minor in Spanish, and a Writing certificate. Reynolds is a 2022 David S. Rood Award winner, a dean's list recipient and a 2019 Boettcher Scholar.
Emerging Faculty Research
Ambrocio Gutiérrez Lorenzo
Ambrocio Gutiérrez Lorenzo is a documentary and descriptive linguist whose research focuses on the syntax and semantics of the Zapotec (Otomanguean) languages of southern Mexico. A first-language speaker of Teotitlán del Valle Zapotec, Gutiérrez Lorenzo will promote work on indigenous languages by native speakers and members of heritage communities.
Rai Farrelly
Rai Farrelly critically examines language teacher education, focusing on English teachers' growth and development as they grapple with issues related to culturally sustaining pedagogies, race, and heritage-language maintenance. Her courses include in-person and online field experiences with learners in Colorado, Peru, and Ukraine, and support Zapotec language revitalization in Mexico through innovations in the design of learning materials.
Alexis Palmer
Alexis Palmer brings a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER grant with her to CU Boulder. In this project, she is working on cross-linguistic methods for better development of language processing tools for low-resource languages. The project is called FOLTA (From One Language to Another). She has also recently become interested in the question of how we can make the outcomes of linguistic documentation more useable and accessible, particularly to support development of pedagogical materials for a language.
Ever since my sophomore year of high school I knew that I wanted to major in Linguistics. To fulfill that dream, I enrolled at CU Boulder in the Fall of 2019 unsure of what to expect. Needless to say, it is not a semester I would ever forget, for during that time I met many amazing professors and students in the Ling department. Being a shy freshman, I felt overjoyed to meet so many people passionate about the same subject as me. As the semesters progressed, I only continued to meet more amazing people in the department, everyone of which has helped me in my college journey.
Sean Kosman, BA, 2023
