Our Dean

Yen-Hwei Lin began serving as Interim Dean Designee of Michigan State University’s College of Arts & Letters on June 10, 2024. She will assume the role of Interim Dean Designee until the MSU Board of Trustees meeting on Friday, June 28, 2024. Pending board approval, Lin will be named Interim Dean, succeeding Christopher P. Long, who has served as Dean since July 2015 and accepted a position at the University of Oregon to serve as its Provost and Senior Vice President. 

A Professor of Linguistics, Lin has chaired the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures in the College of Arts & Letters since 2018. In the chairperson role, she has been responsible for overseeing the academic operation of the department, long-range and strategic planning for the development of departmental programs, preparing and administering the budget, faculty and staff recruitment and annual reviews, and supervising course schedule preparations and teaching assignments. 

Lin has served in additional administrative roles within the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures, including Department Coordinator, Associate Chair, Director of Graduate Studies for Linguistics, and Coordinator of the Chinese program. She was also a Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) Academic Leadership Program Fellow, a BTAA Department Executive Officer Program member, and a Lilly Teaching Fellow. 

Lin has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin and came to Michigan State University in 1989. Her research focuses on phonological theory and phonological patterns in Chinese languages, with additional interests in phonetics, sociolinguistics, and cognitive science. She has been Co-Director of the Phonology-Phonetics Research Group and Experimental Lab in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures; core faculty of MSU’s Cognitive Science Program; affiliated faculty of the Second Language Studies Program; and a core faculty member of MSU’s Asian Studies Center. 

As a nationally and internationally established scholar in Chinese linguistics, Lin currently serves as Co-Editor of Lingua Sinica, Associate Editor of Language and Linguistics, and is on the editorial board of the Journal of East Asian Linguistics. Since 2017, she has been a member of the advisory board of the Institute of Linguistics at Academia Sinica in Taiwan. She has published widely in journals and book volumes and is the author of “The Sounds of Chinese” (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and co-editor of “The Cambridge Handbook of Chinese Linguistics” (Cambridge University Press, 2022).