Student Research Opportunities

I’m seeking interns/independent study (1-4 credits) students for the spring for three specific yet interrelated projects. Please contact me directly at acharityhudley@wm.edu or the graduate students on each project if you are interested. I will have office hours on Wednesdays from 3-5 starting January 25 if you are interested in finding out more!

Details about each project follow.

Prof. Anne H. Charity Hudley
Associate Professor of Education, English, and Linguistics
William and Mary Professor of Community Studies
Co-Director, William & Mary Scholars Undergraduate Research Experience (WMSURE)

Opportunity #1
Book Research Assistants

When author Toni Morrison gave a Nobel Lecture after accepting a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, she chose to focus on how language is essential to humanity. “We die. That may be the meaning of life,” Morrison said. “But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives” (“Nobel lecture,” para 21).

Building on Morrison’s themes, our book, “We Do Language”: English Language Variation in the Secondary English Classroom, presents specific strategies and models for the greater integration and application of language variation-related concepts, skills, and strategies in the secondary English classroom. The book draws on and extends the generalized concepts of Prof. Charity Hudley and Prof. Christine Mallinson’s first book, Understanding English Language Variation in U.S. Schools, by presenting even further contextualization for the need to integrate linguistically-informed pedagogy into secondary English classrooms. The true strength of the book are the vignettes and materials that in-service secondary English educators have developed and shared with us through interviews, focus groups, and other correspondence; these vignettes and materials will directly attest to the value of infusing language variation into secondary English classrooms.

Interns will help gather and organize material from English Educators and participate in workshops with educators in conjunction with the Capstone English Academy: http://education.wm.edu/centers/sli/surn/Capstone/index.php

Graduate Students: April Lawrence (adlawrence@wm.edu) and Kerri Mahoney (krmahoney@email.wm.edu), doctoral students in curriculum and instruction (Secondary English) at the W&M School of Education

Opportunity #2
NSF Collaborative Research: Assessing the Results of Sociolinguistic Engagement with K-12 STEM Education in Maryland and Virginia Public and Independent Schools

Prof. Anne Charity Hudley (W&M) and Prof. Christine Mallinson (UMBC), have been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study how cultural and social language patterns affect learning and student assessment in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) classrooms.

Charity Hudley and Mallinson will receive $171,928 over a three-year period to work with 60 K-12 educators in Baltimore, Hampton Roads and Richmond. We will assess educators’ knowledge of and their responses to language variation, particularly among African-American students. The two researchers will also work with participants to create linguistically informed materials for classroom use.

NSF award notice: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1050938

Interns will help gather and organize material from STEM Educators and participate in workshops with educators. We will also work with STEM students this summer in conjunction with The Center for Gifted Education.

Graduate Students: Darlene Dockery (dddockery@email.wm.edu), doctoral student in Gifted Education at the W&M School of Education, and Inte’a DeShields (idesh1@umbc.edu), doctoral student in Literacy, Language, and Culture at UMBC.

Read more here: http://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2011/professor-receives-nsf-grant-to-study-language-patterns-in-stem-classrooms-123.php

Opportunity #3
NSF Neighborhood Moves and Sociolinguistic Mobility

Professor Anne H. Charity Hudley is a consultant to an NSF, NBER, and NORC funded project that is analyzing how relocating to low-poverty housing affects speech patterns of low-income families who previously lived in high poverty areas. The data is from a Department of Housing and Urban Development program and is a unique opportunity for linguists, sociologists, economists, and public policy makers who don’t often have the opportunity to study such a large-scale, randomized, geographically diverse sample population. This project has important social justice implications concerning the impacts of discriminatory housing practices and educational opportunities. Come be a part of this important work! Interns will be analyzing speech samples from project participants and conducting sociolinguistic analysis on the speech materials.

NSF award notice: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1125795&WT.z_pims_id=5369

Graduate Students:
Brittany McLaughlin (britm@babel.ling.upenn.edu), doctoral student in Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, and Kerry Casey (klcase@email.wm.edu), Masters Student in Public policy at W&M.