Two faculty members from the School of Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics have received promotions.
The College of LAS announced 32 faculty promotions to take effect during the fall semester. The promotions include 15 faculty members who were promoted from associate professor to professor; 13 who were promoted from assistant professor to associate professor; and four who received specialized faculty promotions.
“We are proud to grant these well-deserved promotions to our faculty members,” said Venetria K. Patton, the Harry E. Preble Dean of the College of LAS. “They have displayed a spirit of service and learning to their fields and the people around them. The College of LAS is honored to support these individuals as they enter a new stage of their careers.”
To the rank of professor
Zsuzsanna Fagyal is the head of the Department of French & Italian. In her research and teaching, she focuses on socially meaningful phonetic and lexical variation and change in French, with special emphasis on multiethnic urban speech styles in France. She has been conducting and directing research in both fieldwork and laboratory settings for more than twenty years, and her upcoming book, Home Turf: Multiethnic Speech Styles in French, deals with the cultural context, origins, and linguistic features of working-class Parisian French in contact with immigrant languages in Paris. Her grants and awards include two NSF grants, the most recent of which is in collaboration with a team of engineers at UIUC and Johns Hopkins University on inclusive automatic speech recognition. Fagyal also teaches and develops courses that foreground French around the world. Most recently, in collaboration with students and faculty in French cultural studies, she developed a general education course entitled "French in US Minority Cultures" that traces the spread and decline of French as a heritage language in the American Midwest from the early modern times until the 20th century. The course is expected to be offered for the first time in Fall 2024.
Randall Sadler is a professor in the Department of Linguistics and director of the English as a Second Language (ESL) and Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) programs. He teaches courses on technology-infused language teaching, virtual worlds and language learning, the teaching of second language reading and writing, and an introduction to second language acquisition. His main research area is on the role of technology in language learning, with a particular focus on how telecollaboration, virtual worlds, and virtual reality may be used to enhance that process. His latest book, Virtual Worlds, Telecollaboration, and Language Learning: From Theory to Practice is published by Peter Lang. He also recently partnered with Immerse, a virtual reality language learning platform, and Meta —formerly Facebook, Inc.—to provide underserved high school students with headsets to participate in virtual reality language learning courses.
Dania De La Hoya Rojas, College of LAS
Editor's note: A version of this story first appeared on the College of LAS website.