The Linguistics Student Organization is running a fundraising campaign to support their activities which provide social, academic, and professionalization opportunities for students at all levels interested in linguistics on our campus!
or Venmo @LSOUWmadison
What does the LSO do? Read below for a summary written by LSO officers of all their amazing activities and accomplishments from just the past year!
What does the LSO use donated funds for? The LSO has applied for and received grants from several organizations, including ASM and the LSA, which help to fund their activities. But, some activities are not covered by these grants, and certain items (for example taxes) cannot be paid for with university grants. They rely on donations to fill these gaps.
To give you an idea of what you would be supporting, here are some of the things that the Linguistics Student Organization of UW-Madison has accomplished last year:
In November, we held an informational panel for undergraduate students to hear from current graduate students in linguistics programs across campus on the process of applying to graduate school and what being in graduate school for linguistics is actually like. Graduate student panel members included Macy Floyd, Vatcharit (Pond) Chantajinda, Joseph Moran, Lucas Annear, Sarah Holmstrom, and Martiniano Etchart, along with LSO Co-Presidents Jae Weller and Rachyl Hietpas, as panel moderators. Attendee and undergraduate student in Linguistics, Tommy Harb, had this to say about the event: “Graduate school is definitely in my future, so this was a great event to start thinking about the kind of degrees that would be beneficial, and how to approach the application process. The semblances of ideas about graduate school I had going into the panel were more complete when I left; I feel less clueless (clueful?)!”
In January, we took five undergraduates to the centennial meeting of the Linguistics Society of America in New York City. This experience was invaluable for the undergraduate students, who not only got to see so many of the incredible talks, posters, and keynotes – they were able to see what linguistics is and make connections with people in the field outside our own campus. Following in the Wisconsin Tradition of Sifting and Winnowing, our students brought back what they had learned and presented about their favorite topic or presentation at an LSO meeting in the spring. This was an excellent opportunity to show other interested students who could not attend LSA what a major linguistics conference is like and just how varied linguistics can be.
In April, LSO hosted the 18th Annual Workshop in General Linguistics (WiGL 18). The workshop featured two plenary talks by Dr. Julia Goetze, Assistant Professor of German and Second Language Acquisition, and Dr. Robert Hawkins, Assistant Professor of Psychology, and 12 oral presentations, 6 posters, and two workshops for a total of about 20 student presenters! We also named two winners for the WiGL best abstract award this year: Daniel Stelzer from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Sadie Collar from UW-Madison. The workshop gave students from not only Madison but across the country the opportunity to present their research, hear about interesting research their peers are conducting as well as network with other students passionate about linguistics.
LSO officers have also been hard at work reviewing and editing proceedings submissions for last year’s WiGL (WiGL 17), which are in the last stages of editing and should be published online soon as well as beginning the review process for submissions to this year’s WiGL proceedings (WiGL 18). These proceedings give LSO officers experience with both the editing and review process as well as giving student authors a low-stakes opportunity to publish their work.
Over the summer, LSO Co-President, Jae Weller, ran grant workshops with the help of Language Sciences professors Kelly Wright and Monica Macaulay to assist UW-Madison students in applying for travel grants to the annual LSA conference. These workshops seem to have been highly beneficial as workshop attendees Thomas Harb, senior major in Linguistics, and Tvisha Rao, sophomore aspiring computational linguist, were both awarded CEDL (Ethnic Diversity in Linguistics Committee) travel grants, and workshop organizer, Jae Weller, 4th year Linguistics PhD student, was awarded a COGEL (Committee on Gender Equity in Linguistics) travel grant. These grants greatly reduce the cost of attending the annual LSA meeting allowing students to more feasibly attend the annual meeting.
Additionally, LSO officers along with officers from other student linguistics organizations across the country applied and were accepted to give a workshop on Student Linguistics Organizations at the annual LSA conference in Philadelphia. The workshop aims to provide resources and connections for students and faculty involved in student organizations or who are hoping to initiate or increase such activities at their institution, and to formally establish the Student Linguistics Associations Coalition (SLAC), which will be a network of student leaders and faculty advisors of student organizations from different institutions with the intended goal of inter-university communication and cooperation.
This year, the LSO will be hosting bi-weekly meetings to facilitate student engagement within the linguistics community on campus and offer an opportunity for students with questions about the field to chat with LSO officers. Additionally, we will again be applying for a travel grant to take students to the annual conference of the LSA in January and will be hosting WiGL in the spring before spring break (March 14-16).
While we have been fairly successful in the past at applying for and receiving grants from both the ASM and International Student Services to put on WiGL each year and take an organization trip to the LSA, these grants could not fund all associated costs such as LSA membership dues for undergraduate students, travel costs to attend the LSA, tax on items, and many of the day-to-day costs of running the LSO.
Therefore, the officers of the LSO would like to ask for donations of any kind to maintain and further the work that LSO does. We are especially launching a fundraising effort to cover the cost of student memberships to the LSA ($46) for our undergraduate members. Student LSA membership provides many benefits including online access to several linguistics journals, reduced registration costs to attend the annual LSA meeting, mentorship opportunities and more. Additionally, we ask for any donations to help us cover the taxes that grants we receive cannot pay for. Please consider donating to help cover the cost of an undergraduate’s LSA membership and/or to fund LSO events and activities like WiGL.
If you are able to contribute, LSO can accept donations via checks made out to “Linguistics Student Organization”, funds sent to our Paypal @LSOuwmadison (https://paypal.me/LSOuwmadison), or Venmo @LSOUWmadison.