LLD Secures a Grant for $1.1 Million!
Can language save the world?
Apparently the U.S. State Department thinks it certainly can help, because they have awarded $1.1 million to SJSU’s Department of Linguistics and Language Development. According to department chair and proposal author Dr. Swathi Vanniarajan, the grant aims to facilitate U.S./Pakistani relations and develop better understanding between the two nations. In this vein the LLD faculty from SJSU have been working with faculty and graduate students from the University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan.
Our campus has already welcomed four visiting faculty from Azad Jammu, two men and two women. They were intrigued by our model of student-centered education, where much of the content of coursework is driven by student ideas and interests. This method in turn serves as a model for participatory democracy, which is one of the State Department’s goals.
During this visit, Dr. Vanniarajan presented on his specialty of second language acquisition. Other faculty participants included Daniel Silverman on phonology and Roula Svorou on syntax and semantics. One of the great gifts of this award, however, is that all instructors in the department will play a role in working with their Pakistani cohorts, providing the entire LLD faculty an opportunity for professional enrichment and offering unique learning opportunities for their students.
Other benefits of the grant are that LLD has developed a synergetic relationship with the State Department, including consulting work on English as a Second Language. The Linguistics and Language Development faculty also have welcomed Fulbright scholars to campus who are working in their discipline. Activities like these are placing the department in a globally prominent position.
Some of the tasks the two cohort schools will be working on together are creating a written language and reference grammar for Pahari, a language from Kashmir. Other projects include revising curricula in linguistics and applied linguistics, research collaboration, and a faculty exchange to enrich both groups’ outlook and an understanding of one another’s culture. Lastly, our San José State team will seek to impart the concepts of American values and American culture to their Pakistani counterparts.
The backstory to this success is one of perseverance by Dr. Swathi Vanniarajan. He applied for the State Department grant last year but was turned down. Learning valuable lessons from that experience, he applied again this year and beat out numerous universities from around the nation. He feels SJSU was an attractive choice for the mission because our LLD program “has always believed in globalization. Our Applied Linguistics curriculum offers TESOL and a focus on World Englishes. We feel there is no one standard English; there are many, for example Standard American English, Standard Indian English, and so on. Each has its own flavor, and they must be recognized as equals.”
Apparently this global and democratic perspective was attractive to the State Department’s award committee, realizing that English—while becoming the lingua franca of the planet—needs skilled messengers to spread the word(s).
By Cathleen Miller
