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Unit Contributions to Equity, Diversity, Inclusion 6552

Mon, 10/16/2017 - 10:37 — epederso
Academic Years: 
2017-2018
Department: 
Linguistics
Division: 
Humanities
Academics
1. Faculty: 

Faculty Members of the "UO Linguistics Committee on Diversity and Inclusion" (LCDI)
Chair: Eric Pederson (Associate Professor)
Lisa Redford (Professor)
Melissa Baese-Berk (Associate Professor)
Charlotte Vaughn (Instructor)

The faculty is acutely aware of the shortage of underrepresented groups on our faculty. We are hoping to partially address this in our upcoming faculty search by active solicitation and consideration of candidates from such groups (especially those who may belong to a minority language community).

2. Staff: 

Staff member(s) of the "UO Linguistics Committee on Diversity and Inclusion" (LCDI)
Linda Campbell (office and budget manager)

3. Graduate Programs: 

Graduate student member of "UO Linguistics Committee on Diversity and Inclusion" (LCDI):
Milntra Raksachat (PhD student)

We actively recruit graduate students from underrepresented groups in both our Language Teaching program (MA) and our Theoretical (PhD) program. We have traditionally focused on Native American and international linguistic minorities as might be expected from the international reputation of the department. We are also trying to develop our program to better attract students from other underrepresented US groups. For example, a number of African American students take the department's Swahili courses and can become interested in linguistics through that connection.

4. Undergraduate Programs: 

Undergraduate student member of "UO Linguistics Committee on Diversity and Inclusion" (LCDI): TBD

The profile and efforts are similar to that of our graduate program.
We also attract interest of diverse students through our undergraduate classes "Language and Power", "Sociolinguistics", "Languages of the World", and "African American English Seminar"

5. Outreach and Partnerships: 

The Department of Linguistics has been engaged throughout its history with Native/Indigenous/First Nations/Adivasi / “Fourth World” communities in North and South America, Africa, and South / Southeast Asia. Originally this engagement consisted primarily in research by Oregon academics on undocumented languages, but over the past 20 years we have been increasingly involved with community language development programs and with “capacity development”, providing training for community language workers, and, ultimately, trying to bring students from these communities into our undergraduate and graduate programs.
Among the ways this outreach is accomplished:
1) literacy development of unwritten minority languages
2) summer workshops bringing community workers together
3) active recruitment of students (Grad and UG) from minority language communities (US and abroad) to bring their linguistic training back to their communities

6. Other: 

For many reasons, especially but not only financial, it is more difficult to bring students to Oregon from overseas communities. The Department is dedicated to this goal, however. For example, in Summer 2017, our PhD student from the minority Boro tribe of North East India successfully defended his dissertation and is now employed at Gauhati University in Assam State.