CU Linguistics is pleased to announce our 2023 David Rood Award reipients: Vincent Burnett and Chloe Circenis!
Vincent Burnett is a Japanese and Linguistics double major, with a Korean minor, and is entering his junior year of college this coming fall. He has been placed on the Dean’s list every semester since attending CU Boulder. His main interest is in translation, and he hopes to become a translator for Japanese and Korean content into English, with a focus on game media like video games, trading card games, and board games. He is especially interested in research on how people translate works; in particular, he is interested in how interpreters and translators choose to translate from a language with an in-depth honorific system (like Japanese and Korean) into a language without an in-depth honorific system (like English). How do translators decide the most appropriate way to represent an honorific phrase in a language where honorifics do not exist? He is currently working with PhD student Rebecca Lee through the social sciences program Studio Lab to collect and filter Twitter data using specific linguistic constructions. He has also previously worked with the SWAP Lessons program through the linguistics Literacy Practicum, helping a CU employee practice English.
Chloe Circenis is pursuing a major in Linguistics with a certificate in Cognitive Science and double minors in Arabic and Hindi/Urdu. In the Spring of 2023, Circenis was awarded Linguistics Undergraduate Research Awards for her experiment investigating gendered object conceptualization in Native English speakers learning Spanish, as well as for her analysis of lexical relations present in English road signs in Sikkim, India. Circenis's studies are interdisciplinary, exploring the junction of computational linguistics and cognitive psychology. In the future, she hopes to further explore the effects of language on attention and cognition, particularly across languages. Outside of scholarly pursuits, Circenis enjoys embracing her native Coloradan identity by partaking in climbing, cycling, drinking coffee, and making art.
Awarded since 2017, the David Rood Award recognizes a continuing student or students for their outstanding academic achievement in our undergraduate program, as well as potential for further success in linguistics. The scholarship of $500 is named in honor of Professor David Rood, who retired in 2016 after 48 years of teaching at CU.
Congratulations, Vincent and Chloe!