Giving in Action: 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

Linguistics Student Honors

Graduating seniors in linguistics have received a variety of recognitions in addition to distinction and latin honors. The Jacob van Ek award recognizes undergraduates who excel academically academics and give service to the campus and community. The David S. Rood scholarship recognizes academic achievement and potential for further success in linguistics. It is named for Professor of Linguistics David Rood, who retired in 2016 after 48 years of teaching.

Evi Judge

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.

Reece Suchocki

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.

Emily Reynolds

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.

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, Linguistics sophomore

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.

Joseph Dupris

Joseph Dupris, Jr. explores the implications of racial and political recognition in tribal contexts, and offers an approach to tribalizing language research in an era of revitalization and reclamation. Dupris, who is enrolled in the Klamath Tribes of southern OR and northern CA, was introduced to maqlaqsyals, the Klamath language, as a child attending tribal culture camps. He now develops teaching methods and workshops to help youth learn—and adults re-embrace—a language that has long been suppressed.

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.