Plan for Pitt 2025

Project Lead

Abdesalam Soudi
Linguistics

Select Collaborators

Judy Chang
Magee Women’s Hospital

Shelome Gooden
Linguistics

Audrey Murrell
David Berg Center for Ethics and Leadership

Jeannette South-Paul
Family Medicine

Abstract

This project draws on the Linguistics department’s existing internship program and aims to create an engagement platform for connecting linguistics to the community and industry, and ultimately, a center to house this program.

The goals are to increase the visibility of linguistics, prepare students for challenging careers where linguistics is part of the solution, train students in a supportive environment, and strengthen Pitt Linguistics-industry partnerships. This will create a place where interns, alumni, faculty, staff, community, and industry partners work in a cooperative environment to share knowledge through research and education.

This is an ideal time to launch this partnership. As Chancellor Gallagher notes, Pitt is located in an increasingly diverse city that has transformed from a metropolis anchored in the steel and coal industries to one known for educational and technology incubator institutions and an internationally recognized health system. It is crucial to prepare students to profit from this opportunity in the region. It is equally imperative that medical and tech organizations realize the potential contributions for humanities to their projects. For instance, the barriers to shifting from computers as tools to computers as dialogue partners who can converse as engagingly as humans, are not only technical but also linguistic. The linguistic internship expansion will also aid Pitt in engaging diverse Pittsburgh communities and will allow our linguistic talent to support industries as they work across language and culture barriers to improve lives and build diverse and inclusive environments for all.

Event Supported by Pitt Seed Grants

Humanities at Work in the Community, Health and Tech Industry: Linguistics Paving the Way

View event program

Left - Dr. John C. Knapp, keynote speaker for Humanities at Work.

Right - Linguistics students at Humanities at Work.

Recognition of community and industry partners at the Humanities at Work Engagement event:

As part of the first ever humanities at work at Pitt in 2019, we formally recognized 7 of our partners with Pitt-branded awards in appreciation of their collaboration and support of our interns and our HinH initiative. We recognized companies and partners who worked with us 5 years or longer.

The awards were of four kinds: a) Outstanding Community Partner Award, b) Outstanding Industry Partner Award, c) Outstanding Educational Collaboration Award, d) Outstanding Partner Award. The companies who we recognized are as follows:

Outstanding Educational Collaboration Award
Department of Family Medicine
Magee Women’s Hospital

Outstanding Partner Award
English Language Institute (ELI)

Outstanding Industry Partner Award
M*Modal/ 3M
Semantic Compaction Systems
Voci Technologies

Outstanding Community Partner Award
UPMC Health Plan:

Community and Industry Partners:
M*Modal/ 3M
Voci Tech
Wikitongues
The ArticuLab
Magee Women’s Hospital
UPMC Enterprises
Global Wordsmiths
Semantic Compaction Systems (Minspeak®)
UPMC Health Plancare
Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages
Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council
Geriatrics and Pulmonary and Critical Care
The David Berg Center

If you wish to become a partner, please email soudia@pitt.edu and hinh@pitt.edu.

Humanities in Health Series

Intern News (2019-2020)

Congratulations to Delaney Tyson!
Delaney Tyson, Pitt Linguistics intern at Magee, on winning a Humanities and Social Sciences Scholarship at the 2020 ACH Research Forum to present very important work with our partner D. Judy Chang on clinicians’ language associated with disclosure of intimate partner violence (June 2020).
Our paper was one of the top 5 papers at ACH Research Forum

Congratulations to Ben Zimmer!
Ben Zimmer, University of Pittsburgh2020 graduate, on his full-time position as a Linguistic Data Specialist with 3M | M*Modal starting this July! Ben completed his internship with this company recently. Internship program coordinator Dr. Abdesalam Soudi says, "M*Modal has been an amazing partner of the linguistic internship program at Pitt launched in 2013.We truly appreciate the relationships we have built over many years with these partners ! They have all worked very hard to recruit from our talent even during a pandemic!"

Congratulations to Goldie Segol!
Goldie Segol, Pitt Linguistics Intern, on her full-time position as Data Engineer at UPMC Enterprises. Goldie finished her linguistic internship at UPMC Enterprises recently and started her new full-time job in August.

Congratulations to Annika Puskar!
Annika Puskar, University of Pittsburgh 2020 graduate, on her full-time position as a Junior Linguistic Data Specialist with Voci Technologies starting August 2020! Annika completed her internship with this company recently. Internship program coordinator Dr. Abdesalam Soudi says, “Voci Technologies has been an amazing industry partner of the linguistic internship program at Pitt since Spring of 2014.We truly appreciate our partnership with the team at Voci who continue to host our interns and recruit from our linguistics talent”

Congratulations to Marleigh Bickel!
Marleigh Bickel, Pitt Undergraduate Linguistics intern at Voci Technologies, Inc. visited my office to share that she was offered an exciting full-time opportunity with Voci Technologies, Inc. Marleigh graduated in December 2019 from Pittand started her full-time job in January 2020.