1. Illinois Linguistics: Overview

2. State of the Department
Department of Linguistics founded in 1965
Division of MATESL founded in 1966
Merger of MATESL program and Department of Linguistics in 2008
One of the oldest and most comprehensive Departments in the nation
That’s a good start—This slide sets us up for a discussion of the niche we wish to claim: BREADTH and DEPTH, unique among our peers, or anywhere else (some U.K. schools have the same model, but not in the U.S.).

3. State of the Department
Staff: (AY 15-16)
18 tenure stream faculty (15.25 FTE)
3 visiting faculty
18 non-tenure stream faculty
Zero-time adjunct faculty (around 20)
Around 50 assistants (TA/GA/RA) (25+ FTE)
Students: (AY 15-16)
82 graduate students (LING MA/PhD:43, MATESL: 39)
98 undergraduate majors
41 undergraduate minors (18 in TESL – largest)
Annual budget: $2.9 mil (AY 15-16)
Sponsored research: $130k/yr ( avg)
Instruction: 15k+ IU’s (AY 15-16)

4. Programs Undergraduate Programs Graduate Programs Service ESL Program
2 Majors (Ling, CS-Ling)
6 Minors (Ling, TESL(2), Arabic, Hindi, African Lgs)
Certificate (TESL) (also available to grad students)
Graduate Programs
MA in TESL
MA in Linguistics
PhD in Linguistics
Service ESL Program
Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL) Program
The focus on undergraduate education in Linguistics and downsizing the grad program (small, but rigorous) were undertaken relatively recently in anticipation of growth trends and campus initiatives.

5. Research and Scholarship
Comprehensive
All subfields of theoretical/general and applied linguistics
Interdisciplinary
SLATE, Romance Ling, Beckman Institute, College of Engineering, Applied Health Sciences, Education, Media, School of Library and Information Science, School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics
Department as the hub of language/linguistics-related research on campus
Empirical/Quantitative/Experimental
Our strength I believe is that we, as a Department, have always been able to stay ahead of the emerging trends in the field through innovative practices (productive alliances with "sister" fields: ECE. CS, SHS, Psych, Anthro,, Communication, CTS, Etc.), creative investments (in labs, for instance), and adaptive models of research and teaching (data-driven theorizations as well as theory-driven data analysis). We pay attention to the potential of machine translations without losing sight of issues of language endangerment--now that is a lot of linguistics real estate we cover as a Department ... that is the "comprehensive" training we offer to our grads and undergrads!!!

6. Areas of Strength Second language studies Heritage languages
Sociolinguistics of multilingualism
Phonetics and Phonology
Computational linguistics and language technology in teaching
Syntax-Semantics-Pragmatics
Areal linguistics
South Asian, East Asian, Romance, Semitic, African languages, Global/World Englishes