Linguistics at Work in the Community and Tech Industry
This seed project draws on the Linguistics department’s internship and our humanities in health connections 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 (1) increase the visibility of linguistics (2) prepare students for challenging careers where linguistics is part of the solution, (3) train them in a supportive environment, and (4) 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 the perfect 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.
For more information contact Soudi: soudia@pitt.edu