Revised 7/2014
Linguistics seeks to improve in recruitment and retention of students from non-traditional and underrepresented backgrounds. The following sections describe the obstacles to recruitment of students from these groups, and outline the department’s planned activities to support these efforts. Some activities (“current” or “continuing”) reflect diversity activities already in place. Others represent new efforts.
Recruitment
- Linguistics is not a well-known field. Linguistics at the University of Washington is not well-advertised. Recruitment begins with making prospective students aware of us.
- Even prospective students who are aware of Linguistics as a field are not well aware of the career paths open to linguists, and the field is perceived as not economically viable.
- Our current degree programs are designed around full time study, while many students from non-mainstream backgrounds may be seeking degree programs that allow part time study.
- According to the results of a survey of minority scholars conducted by the Linguistic Society of America's Committee for Ethnic Diversity in Linguistics (CEDL), more underrepresented minorities pursue careers in the linguistic subfields of sociolinguistics, computational linguistics, and creole linguistics than in the traditional subfields of syntax and phonology.
Key recruitment activities (by targeted group):
Undergraduates at UW looking for a major:
- Send departmental staffers to campus career fairs
- Ensure Linguistics has a presence at annual UW events such as World Languages Day, the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO) and the Undergraduate Research Symposium
Prospective undergraduates from other schools who may or may not be already considering UW:
- Continue to identify students with interests in the field of Linguistics at regional recruitment events such as the California Forum on Diversity
- Talk about Linguistics in invited lectures and career fair opportunities taking place at Seattle Schools (Hamilton Middle School, Puget Community Cooperative School)
- Increase our presence at local Science-featured events (e.g., Paws-on Science)
Prospective graduate students:
- Build out the information on the department website to include funding opportunities in the department and information about student life
- Continue to develop our new funding model, in which departmental revenues are used to provide a set number of multi-year full-funding packages each year to top-ranked new incoming students