Letter to the editor: Applied linguistics deserves better than disestablishment

By Jori”ˆLindley

As a graduate student of the UCLA applied linguistics department and in response to the Daily Bruin article of May 25, I would like to explain, proudly, who we are, and characterize what is happening. It is to the detriment of UCLA and Los Angeles in general to lose such a fantastic department, and one that does so much to serve the community, such as organizing the Linguistic Diversity public conference last August in response to the proposal of the language-based discriminatory laws in Arizona. We rank second among all linguistics and applied linguistics programs in the nation, combined, yet are slated for disestablishment.

It is unfortunate that the article did not mention what we do or that interested students should join while they can (the university must see to it that they can graduate on time). Our undergraduate major is unique in the country. Often confused with “regular” linguistics, applied linguistics is different. Rather than focus on theoretical aspects of language (e.g. syntax), we work in other, highly multidisciplinary areas such as discourse analysis and language acquisition. We also have a strong language teaching component, which virtually guarantees postgraduate employment, including abroad. Enticed? Visit us in Rolfe 3300.

The Academic Senate has decided to suspend our admissions beginning fall 2012 and disestablish us. The key fact they conveniently ignore is that the university has been denying us FTEs (full term employment, i.e. new, full-time professors) since 1996.

At one point, we were even put on a “no growth” list. We peaked at 11 faculty members in the 1980s. After that, we gained seven (after they stopped giving us FTEs, we managed to “borrow” two tenured FTEs from other departments, and an untenured faculty member switched to our department), but we lost twelve.

We are not innocent of past mistakes (namely, we should have established an undergraduate major sooner), but the denial of FTEs to us for more than a decade is inexplicable nonetheless. The university gives FTEs to other departments, including ones with fewer students than ours. What is really going on here?

The title of the Daily Bruin article characterized us as having “failed;” in reality, we met almost all of the Senate’s demands with flying colors. We established a major and already have 30-plus undergraduates who are spreading the word. We also, as asked, appointed faculty student advisers.

The only thing we have not done is found an internal chair.

There are two reasons for this, the first being that this is hard when we only have six internal (“core”) faculty members. One served as chair for 16 years; another just finished a three-year term and may serve again but after her sabbatical.

The second reason is that we need not only to find a chair, but one that “counts” according to overly stringent specifications. According to the Senate, the chair must be one of the six core faculty members ““ a specification which renders ineligible our numerous affiliated faculty members (our internal but untenured junior faculty member is also ineligible). Given the interdisciplinary nature of our program, and the fact that having an affiliated faculty member as chair is neither rare nor remarkable, why are they restricting our candidate pool in this way?

The department has tried to meet all demands put before it, but what they ask is nearly impossible. In the meantime, there is no talk of giving us an FTE if we find a chair, so this demand is just a distraction from the real issue: We need FTEs. Thus, many of our professors feel that the most important thing to do now is tend to their students. They would rather do that than chair and fight this, making them less able to mentor students and, ultimately, unable to save the department. Our fate (death by attrition) was apparently sealed in 1996, when the deans stopped giving us FTEs.

This is unjust, especially given that our faculty and students are nothing short of spectacular. Our graduate students present at conferences world-wide, run prestigious journals (e.g. Issues in Applied Linguistics; Crossroads of Language, Interaction, and Culture, as well, is often run by our graduate students), and win awards (e.g. two of this year’s five campus-wide Distinguished Teaching Assistant awards went to Applied Linguistics graduate students).

Our faculty is highly distinguished as well, e.g. Professor Charles Goodwin was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Honoris Causa from Linköping University, Sweden (2009); Professor Lyle Bachman the Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award from the American Association for Applied Linguistics (2010), Professor Susan Plann the Distinguished Teaching Award (2009) and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award (2007); and Professor Olga Yokoyama the Faculty/Staff Partnership Award (2010).

The Academic Senate is making a mistake that will harm students, UCLA, and the community. We will continue to fight this. We welcome any support.

Lindley is a doctoral student in applied linguistics.