About Me

I am an academic adviser in the Human Centered Design and Engineering Department at the University of Washington in Seattle. In my career spanning over 11 years of advising at UW, I have worked as an adviser for UW's Nutritional Sciences Program, Earth & Space Sciences Department, Integrated Sciences Program, Linguistics Department, and Undergraduate Academic Affairs Advising.

Academically, my training is in linguistics, specifically sociolinguistics. I received my Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas in linguistics in 2005 and my Master of Arts from UW in 2009. I completed my Ph.D. in linguistics at UW in 2015. My primary areas of interest are sociolinguistics, language attitudes, folk linguistics, perceptual dialectology, sociophonetics, regional identity, and the Southern United States English dialect.

My Master's thesis, "(ay) monophthongization in Deer Park, Texas," can be downloaded here. For my thesis, I measured /ai/ monophthongization in terms of ΔF1 (change in vowel height over time), ΔF2 (change in vowel backness over time), and Offset F2-F1 (the difference between F2 and F1 at offset). One of the most interesting findings of my thesis research was that while the youngest age group differed from the middle age group on all three measurements, the middle age group only differed from the oldest age group in terms of ΔF1. This suggests that change in vowel height over time may be a particularly important cue for distinguishing between middle and oldest age group speakers for this linguistic variable.

My Ph.D. research focused on perceptual dialectology and regional identity. My dissertation, "Southern, Texan, or Both?: Southernness and Identity in Deer Park, Texas," can be downloaded here. This research explored perceptual notions of “southernness” by examining the perspectives of Deer Park residents regarding internal differentiation within the Southern dialect region and the meaning of Southern identity.