Real-World Experience

The Institute of Linguistics offers undergraduate students a number of opportunities to learn outside the classroom, obtain job skills and real-world experience, and make connections on campus and in the community. There are multiple ways for you to get involved.

Internships

Take advantage of the invaluable work and academic experience gained through pursuing an internship. The Linguist List and Linguistics Society of America are both resources that students can use to locate experiences in addition to CLA's Career and Internship Services. Linguistics students in the past have had the following internship experiences:

  • Marketing Intern, Alliance Francaise de Minneapolis
  • Marketing Analyst Intern, Sysco Asian Foods
  • Intern, Groupon Malaysia
  • Project Management Intern, LUZ, Inc
  • Intern, Duluth Library Foundation
  • Legal Intern, Lehmann & Lutter, P.A.
  • Diversity Intern, Met Council

Research Opportunities

Research Groups

Students can join one of the department's research groups, including the Syntax/Semantics Reading Group, the Computational Linguistics Reading Group, the Minnesota Syntax and Psycholinguistics Lab, and the Syntax/Prosody Reading Group.

Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)

The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) provides grants of up to $1,700 (including stipends and research expenses) for you to carry out a project of your own design in close collaboration with a faculty sponsor or work with a faculty member on her/his scholarly or creative project.

How to find a UROP project

UROP projects can be initiated either by students or by faculty. You are welcome to approach faculty members with your own research project ideas. Sometimes UROP project announcements are sent via e-mail to linguistics students. Individual students and faculty also may approach each other. The UROP website includes a blog where faculty can post projects.

Recent UROP/URS research projects in Linguistics

  • Joanna Shoemaker: Seeking the structure of multiple sluicing. Supervised by Tim Hunter.
  • Kassandra Williams: Comparative Analysis of the Augment in Bantu Languages. Supervised by Claire Halpert.
  • Alexander Jarnow: Variation in Chinese Topic-Prominent Constructions. Supervised by Claire Halpert.
  • Colin Davis: A Comparative Linguistic Study of Azeri and Japanese Verbal Morphosyntax. Supervised by Claire Halpert.
  • Thuy Bui: Yes-no questions in Vietnamese. Supervised by Hooi Ling Soh.
  • Benjamin Slye: A study of Bantu languages and their augments. Supervised by Claire Halpert.
  • Christopher Hammerly: Which semantic and phonological characteristics of known words optimize foreign word-learning in preschoolers? Supervised by Maria Sera.
  • Dominic Fladland: The likeness requirement for coordination in English. Supervised by Brian Reese.
  • Kyle Marek-Spartz: Classifying language change, determining which aspects social network structure most affect change. Supervised by Brian Reese.
  • Hannah Sande: Nouchi: A phonological case study. Supervised by Nancy Stenson.
  • Xuyen Dinh: The distribution and interpretation of time and spatial classifiers in Vietnamese. Supervised by Hooi Ling Soh.
  • Ethan Poole: The partitive Case in Northern Swedish. Supervised by Hooi Ling Soh.
  • Kyle Marek-Spartz: Sociolinguistic implications of outgroups on texting and slang use. Supervised by Brian Reese.
  • Laura Ruuska: Perceptual learning of gender differences in speech. Supervised by Benjamin Munson.
  • Evan Jones: Irish initial mutations and English loanwords. Supervised by Nancy Stenson.