The Department of Linguistics has received two grants, the Modern Language Association [MLA] Pathway Step Grant and the Broadening Participation in Cognitive Science Grant from the Cognitive Science Society, to enhance student career readiness, expand hands-on professional opportunities, and strengthen outreach to future generations of students in linguistics and cognitive science.

The MLA Pathways Step Grant, awarded to Drs. Jaydene Elvin, Jidong Chen, and Brian Agbayani, will support the Community Language and Linguistics Pathways Program. The program is designed to provide linguistics majors with paid student assistantships that offer practical experience across a wide range of career settings. These opportunities include language teaching at community colleges, developing open educational resources (OER), working in print and publishing companies, supporting nonprofit organizations, and documenting endangered languages, among other career-related experiences. Students will also participate in professional development and career-readiness workshops and connect with alumni working in linguistics and related fields.

The Broadening Participation in Cognitive Science Initiative, awarded to Chen and Agbayani, will support efforts to increase awareness of Cognitive Science and engage prospective students. Planned activities include support for the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad, as well as training workshops for high school students, a public Cognitive Science speaker series, and a summer camp designed to introduce more students to the field of cognitive science.

The Department of Linguistics is grateful for the support of both organizations and looks forward to using these grants to create meaningful opportunities for current students while building stronger connections with prospective students and local communities. Please follow the Linguistics Department on social media for updates on grant-supported events.