Research & Projects

We work closely with community partners in the Portland area and around the world on research and teaching projects. Our projects exemplify PSU's vision of an "equitable and sustainable future through academic excellence, urban engagement, and expanding opportunity for all."

To get involved with a project, contact the faculty leads directly.

Connect with Faculty

503 Design Collective

The 503 Design Collective is a group of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff and community members that are interested in social interaction around mobile digital technology to study language and mobility and language learning in the wild. To get involved, contact Steven Thorne or John Hellermann.

Dollar bills with messages written on them

Activist Applied Linguistics

Activist Applied Linguistics is doing applied linguistics together with community partners in order to make positive social change. It does not occur in vacuums; it grows and unfolds in specific contexts with common goals and intentional power sharing among applied linguists and communities. To get involved, contact Janet Cowal.

Professor next to poster, “Where’s the vaccine for racism?”

Language Around Metropolitan Portland (LAMP)

LAMP is a group that is focused on getting undergraduates involved in sociolinguistic research in the greater Portland area, helping to formulate a more nuanced understanding of which languages and varieties are used, where, and by whom. To get involved, contact lampPDX@pdx.edu.

Quote cut-out with picture of cat, and “How do you say cat in your language?”

Linguistic Diversity and Discrimination Awareness Project (LiDA)

By understanding what attitudes, preferences, and biases are held about linguistic diversity by the PSU community members, we hope to support speakers of all languages and dialects by better understanding and responding to this issue. To get involved, contact Lynn Santelmann, Jenny Mittelstaedt, or Janet Cowal.

A group of students with computers in a classroom listening to an instructor

Literacy, Language, & Technology Research Group (LLTR)

LLTR is a community of faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduate students working together on a wide range of research and service projects centered on the acquisition of literacy, digital literacy, and second languages among adults. To learn more, contact Kathy Harris.

Faculty and students working on research project

Explore Applied Linguistics Research

Browse faculty publications and presentations, student theses, and other research collections on PDXScholar.

PDXScholar

Other Projects

Applied Improvisation for Communication

The Applied Improvisation (AI) for Communication project is a collaboration of faculty and students in various departments (e.g., Applied Linguistics, Speech & Hearing, World Languages & Literatures). In partnership with Dr. Theresa Robbins Dudeck, we offer AI workshops and conduct systematic research to examine how AI training may promote students’ communication skills in academic, professional, clinical, and interpersonal communicative contexts. To learn more, contact Tetyana Sydorenko.

Civil Engineering Writing Project

The Civil Engineering Writing Project is a collaboration between applied linguists and civil engineers to study the writing of engineering practitioners and students, and to help students become better prepared for workplace writing. Students in our department work on the project doing grammatical and rhetorical analyses, writing computer programs for linguistic analysis, and developing teaching materials. Susan Conrad is the head of the project, which was funded by the National Science Foundation and has included five universities. For more information, contact Susan Conrad.

Oregon State Bar Website Accessibility

The Oregon State Bar (OSB) is committed to increasing access to justice for all people in Oregon. The OSB website has a section "For the Public"; it includes information about legal resources, rights, etc. OSB members acknowledge that this section was written for attorneys and may not be comprehensible to non-attorneys. Applied Linguistics students are partnering with OSB to make this section accessible to non-attorneys including adults with low literacy or for whom English is an additional language. Contact Janet Cowal.

Documenting the Sherbro Language and Culture

Documenting the Sherbro Language and Culture project was a collaborative effort documenting the language and culture of the Sherbro people. Collaboration involved the Sherbro people but also host-country linguists and linguistics students from the national university. The emphasis was on training, developing local capacities, and continuing support for the language after the project's completion. The goals depended on local support, of course, and all revolved around the central goal of language documentation.

Carter Foundation Award

The Community ESL Project was initiated in 1995 to help non-English speaking adults in the community. Since then, our department's MA TESOL and TESL Certificate students have earned academic credit teaching ESL classes to adults around Portland. In Spring 2009, The Community ESL Project received a Carter Foundation Award for university and community based partnerships. Funds from the award were used to purchase picture dictionaries and other materials for classes.