DEPARTMENTAL NEWS

In Summer 2008, the UCSB the Department of Linguistics will host the first Institute on Field Linguistics and Language Documentation (inField). Through two weeks of workshops and four weeks of field training, inField will provide linguists, students, and native speakers of minority languages with the skills needed to document, maintain, and/or revitalize minority languages. Professor Carol Genetti is the director of inField; the assistant director is Rebekka Siemens. inField is funded by the National Science Foundation, the UCSB Department of Linguistics, and the UCSB Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.

Graduate program assistant Mary Rae Staton has been awarded a 2007 Staff Citation of Excellence award. The purpose of this highly competitive award is to acknowledge and celebrate outstanding achievements and meritorious service of career staff and particularly to recognize excellence, creativity, and initiative. The department is delighted to congratulate Mary Rae on this public recognition of her outstanding work on behalf of our graduate students.

The Department of Linguistics is very proud to announce that it has received the 2006-07 Departmental Graduate Mentorship Award. As the award letter states, the department "was cited for its exemplary efforts to recruit top candidates, distribute funding resources effectively, and create an environment conducive to student success. It is clear that the Department makes great efforts to support and mentor its graduate students. This is evidenced by the individual attention faculty give to students early on in the recruitment stage and continues throughout the students' graduate career. The student-run international annual conferences, TA training, Professionalism course, and weekly Linguistics Colloquium series all promote a dynamic intellectual environment. The Department's initiatives in the area of professional training and development have met with great success as their students have accepted positions within industry and top universities." The award reflects the department's longstanding commitment to ensuring that its graduate students receive excellent mentoring throughout their academic careers.