Photo credit: Capstone Linguistics 479 Presentations

This award recognizes our department’s  exceptional commitment to undergraduate learning, as well as the collective effort of our faculty and staff to strengthen students’ educational experiences in their own classrooms and across academic programs.

As an interdisciplinary hub within the College, Linguistics serves students pursuing its major and minor as well as those studying Cognitive Science, Psychology, English, world languages, Computer Science, and other fields. Its courses bring together students with a wide range of backgrounds, interests and career goals. The department is also very responsive to students’ needs in an ever-changing world. In recent years, for example, we have expanded the computational content of our curriculum, making it possible for U-M undergraduate students to acquire skills in coding and the use of AI, in a framework that centers people and our capacity for language. Other recent innovations that have been introduced to our undergraduate program include various initiatives aimed at supporting students to succeed and thrive. We have significantly expanded  the opportunity for our undergraduate students to get involved in research,and to receive support for their research. We now offer a “capstone” required of our majors in which students get to bring together all the linguistic knowledge and research skills they have acquired to address critical research questions within Linguistics.

We have also launched two initiatives aimed at supporting our undergraduate students. Most recently, we have introduced a peer-mentoring system through which undergrad students can consult with other, more senior students, on issues ranging from choosing classes, preparing for post-graduation plans, etc. We have also created a Computational Tutoring program through which undergraduate students in the various undergraduate courses with significant computational content, can get help from students with extensive computational experience. 

Through ongoing innovation in teaching, curriculum development and academic administration, Linguistics faculty and staff have worked to meet the evolving needs of U-M undergraduate students throughout the College.

To read more about the award, please follow this link.

Read more about the Recipients of the 2026-2027 LSA Undergraduate Teaching Awards!