Undergraduate Program

The undergraduate advisor for the linguistics major is Tonia Bleam. The advisor for the linguistics minor is Peggy Antonisse; Antonisse can also provide advising for the major. The best way to contact your advisors is by email. 
 
When you email your advisor to set up a meeting, make sure to include in your email a list of your available dates and times for the entire week (that is, the five weekdays following the day you send your message). If you have sent an email and haven't heard back in two days, please send another email.  
 
In order to make an appointment with your linguistics advisor, send her an email with your name, UID #, the reason for the appointment and a list of your available times during the week. Do not give just one specific time or day when you are available, because it is likely that the advisor will be unavailable at that time, which will result in more email back and forths. Please remember that your professors' time is limited and make the process as streamlined as possible
 
For more information on College of Arts and Humanities requirements, visit the ARHU advising page. 

The department welcomes undergraduate participation in faculty research. This kind of research experience is especially valuable for students planning to go to graduate school. The participation can also lead to a departmental honors project for linguistics majors.

Students can become involved in a wide range of activities, including computer programming and experimental projects in language acquisition, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. Undergraduate students have worked alongside faculty and graduate students—learning to design, execute and analyze experiments—within our Acquisition Lab and our Cognitive Neuroscience of Language Laboratory.
 
Students can receive course credit—through LING 499, “Directed Studies in Linguistics”—to work as a research assistant, working closely with one or more mentors (faculty members, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers) and as part of a research team. In addition to learning research methodologies and implementing various aspects of running experiments (running subjects, coding data, etc), students read articles and participate in lab meetings and discussions to learn about the theoretical questions that motivate the research they are doing. The time commitment will be a total of 8 or 12 hours per week, for 2 or 3 credits, respectively. Some labs require a commitment of 3 credits per semester and/or a 2 semester minimum commitment.
 
To apply for a research position, schedule an interview by contacting the faculty member (or lab manager) in whose research you are interested. The acquisition lab has an informative page about working in the lab here. Be prepared to send a resume, your unofficial transcript, the name of a reference, as well as your next semester’s schedule.
 
The Baggett Summer Scholarship provides a special opportunity for in-depth research experience during the summer (for pay), under the close guidance of a faculty mentor.

Further opportunities for beyond-the-classroom experience can be found in the President's Promise Initiative. This is a "virtual library" of special undergraduate experiences that includes international experiences, internships, living-learning programs, research opportunities, community service learning, leadership experiences and much else. The President's Promise office staff can also be reached at presidentspromise@umd.edu or by telephone at 301-314-7888.

Our students have gone on to some of the most prestigious graduate programs in linguistics and cognitive science, such as MIT, Stanford, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania. Students who combine linguistics with computer science have been hired in high-tech jobs. Students who combine linguistics with the study of a language have gone on to teach languages and work as translators. Many of our students have studied linguistics just for their own interest and have gone on to successful careers in unrelated subjects, including being admitted to prestigious law and medical schools. Study of linguistics develops not only a sensitivity to language, but a scientific approach and keen skills of analysis that are valued by knowledgeable employers in many professions.