Eagles Take Flight celebrates the College of Information's most recent graduates as they embark upon their new careers.

Dillon Shumaker, B.A. Linguistics '22, is accepted into the highly competitive Japan Exchange and Teaching Program. Dillon was chosen as UNT Great Grad last fall when he graduated. Later he was notified that he had been accepted into the JET program, which was his goal! In July, Dillon will travel to Hyogo Prefecture to start his assistant teaching assignment in August.

UNT’s Computational Resource for South Asian Languages Archive (CoRSAL) is pleased to announce its first Archivist in Residence, Marjing Mayanglambam, who is creating an archive of the endangered Pena tradition of Manipur. 

This year, Dr. Shobhana Chelliah traveled to India as a recipient of the Fulbright-Nehru fellowship. While there, she conducted research on a collection and custodial archiving method to integrate training into language documentation.

Dr. Shobhana Chelliah Delivers Keynote at Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) Summer School on Language Documentation

Earlier this May, Dr. Shobhana Chelliah briefed summer school participants about the grave situation that India’s tribal and minor languages face and called upon the scholars to document, preserve, and work towards the revival of such languages.

When alumnus Chris Morphew (BA Linguistics with a minor in Italian 2012/MA Linguistics 2014 with TESOL certificate) is asked about Dr. Haj Ross, his memories are that Haj taught him to love language, to look at the big picture and find ways to break language apart, to think critically, and to take risks. Chris credits Dr.

Kristopher graduated from UNT’s Department of Linguistics with an M.A. in Linguistics and a TESOL Graduate Academic Certificate in 2007 and then went on to a Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh, graduating in 2013. At that time, he also finished two Graduate Academic Certificates (Women’s Studies and East Asian Studies). He tells me that he was really interested in Sociolinguistics and had the chance to do some research in that field and teach classes on the subject along with other Linguistics classes.

Dr. William Salmon joins COI as Professor and Chair of the Department of Linguistics

Darrin had always felt connected to languages; he had taken Spanish and German, done well, and enjoyed it. In 2014 he took Intro to Linguistics with a visiting professor and loved it so much that he changed his major to Linguistics. After graduating with his MA, he worked at Uhaul while also contracting his annotation skills out to companies like Appen, Lionbridge, TELUS International, and DefinedCrowd, an AI marketplace, eventually making the switch to full-time contracting.

Dr. Haj Ross retired from the University of North Texas and has been designated Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus by the UNT Board of Regents. College of Information has started a scholarship in his name to honor him, the students he impacted and future students. Please support the scholarship so that Linguistics students will be reminded of his illustrious career at UNT. Donate to the Haj Ross Squibber Scholarship (unt.edu)

Christal Brewster, 2-time UNT alumna plus Learning Technologies Certificate holder, credits her MA English as a Second Language for her communication, writing, and teaching skills as well as knowledge of adult learning theory, and her Certificate in Learning Technologies for her technical and design skills.