Foreign language teachers play a pivotal role in creating global citizens, but some teachers lack confidence in their ability to speak in their nonnative tongue, which could undermine the quality of language instruction, Michigan State University researchers argue. Peter De Costa, assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages, and Lorena Valmori, a recent Ph.D.…
Hoping to bridge data science and the humanities, Michigan State University researcher Sean Pue will use a fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to study the role of sound in modern South Asian poetry. Pue, director of digital humanities and associate professor of South Asian literature and culture, is the first MSU faculty member to receive a Mellon New Directions…
College of Arts & Letters senior Joshua Schnell has won a National Science Foundation Award (NSF) from the Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Schnell is an Honors College senior double majoring in Religious Studies in the College of Arts & Letters and Anthropology in the College of Social Science. Close to 17,000 students applied for this year's NSF awards with only…
University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum (UURAF), which is the highest representation of any college on campus. Of those CAL students, 87 also are Honors College students. This year’s UURAF takes place Friday, April 8, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the MSU Union. The forum includes poster and oral presentations by undergraduate research teams from all areas of study. Sponsored by…
Catherine Ryu, associate professor of Japanese literature and culture, has received a patent for the technology behind her languagelearning game, Picky Birds. Scholars of the Mandarin Chinese language can learn a lot from birds. That’s the premise of a new language learning game designed by a Michigan State University researcher and an interdisciplinary team of students. Inspired by the varying tones…
March 14, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-63bBkfO7c&feature=emb_title After practicing as an interdisciplinary environmental scholar and teacher for 10 years, Bethany Laursen switched fields to study theories of interdisciplinarity itself, which led her to Michigan State University where she is pursuing both an M.A. in Philosophy and a Ph.D. in Community Sustainability. “At MSU, I have the freedom to sit in two colleges and have committees that work across disciplines,”…
In January 2015, Zoe Zappitell texted Brittney Urich: “I want to make an app that helps improve the lives of college students.” Urich’s positive response was nearly instantaneous. “We immediately began brainstorming the problems that students endure in their lives,” Brittney, a senior majoring in Professional Writing with Business and Communications cognates, says. “We decided that making friends while…
Dr. April Baker-Bell has been invited to join the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Standing Committee on Research, and has also been named a Fellow with the Literacy Research Association (LRA) STAR mentoring program. Baker-Bell is an assistant professor in the MSU Department of Writing, Rhetoric & American Cultures (WRAC), and the African American and African studies program.…
December 15, 2015 The fifth of nine children, who grew up in the city of Khorramabad in mountainous western Iran, Mostafa Papi already had significant learning, teaching, and academic experience in Iran when he applied and was accepted as a doctoral candidate in the Second Language Studies (SLS) Program at Michigan State University. In Iran, Mostafa received a BA in…
After taking the Children’s Language Acquisition course taught by Cristina Schmitt, Honors College and linguistics and neuroscience major Mina Hirzel found something she was truly interested in pursuing. “Cristina invited me to come sit in on the acquisition lab, and that really opened up my world of research.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h12-qxc1ko&feature=emb_title Preschool Language Learning The Language Acquisition Lab operates under the Department…