People

Meet Our Faculty & Staff

Current Office Hours
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Chair and Office Staff

Department Chair
Rob Malouf, Ph.D.
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (619) 594-7111
Office: SHW 201

Administrative Coordinator
(Faculty Contracts, RTP and Evaluations, Marketing, Graduate and Certificate Programs)
Darlene Bych
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (619) 594-1915 | Office: SHW 215

Administrative Coordinator
(Class Schedule, Faculty Workload, Budget, Travel, Payroll, Equipment)
Cassandra Neel, M.A.
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (619) 594-0772 | Office: SHW 213

For general inquires, contact us at [email protected].

Program Directors and Advisors

Linguistics/LCS Undergraduate Advisor & TESL/TEFL Certificate and Transcultural Communication Certificates Advisor
Ian Ruston
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 226

Linguistics Graduate Advisor
Eniko Csomay
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (619) 594-3377 | Office: SHW 246

Arabic Language Director
Dris Soulaimani
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 220

Arabic Language Advisor (Interim)
Youniss El Cheddadi
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 203

Chinese Language Advisor
Ruey-Jiuan Regina Wu
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 242

Filipino Language Advisor
Leticia Pagkalinawan
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 203

Hebrew Language Advisor
Alana Shuster
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 211

Japanese Language Director & Advisor
Yuki Arita
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 250

Korean Language Advisor
Hyejin Cho
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 203

Korean Program Senior Advisor
Soonja Choi
Email: [email protected]

Persian Language Advsior
Pooneh Paydar
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 209

Basic Bilingualism Certificate & Language Acquisition and Bilingualism Minor Advisor
Gregory D. Keating
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 222

Text Analytics Minor, Basic Computational Linguistics Certificate, and Basic Text Analytics Certificate Advisor
Mark Gawron
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 238

Composition for Multilingual Students Program Director
Naseh Nasrollahi Shahri
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 248

Composition for Multilingual Students Program Assistant Director
Stephanie Frame
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 211

Tenured and Tenure-Track Faculty

Yuki Arita, Ph.D.
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 250

Research Interests: Conversation analysis in Japanese talk-in-interaction

Eniko Csomay, Ph.D.
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (619) 594-3377 | Office: SHW 246

Research Interests: Corpus linguistics, spoken discourse analysis, language variation, classroom discourse

Aaron Dinkin, Ph.D.
On Sabbatical Spring 2025
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (619) 594-6389 | Office: SHW 236

Research Interests: Sociolinguistics, language variation and change

Gabriel Doyle, Ph.D.
Will return in Fall 2025
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 240

Research Interests: Computational psycholinguistics

Jean Mark Gawron, Ph.D.
Only Spring Semesters
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 238

Research Interests: Computational linguistics (parsing, pragmatic narrowing, machine translation); semantics (quantification, anaphora, comparatives, lexical semantics)

Gregory D. Keating, Ph.D.
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 222

Research Interests: First, second, and heritage language acquisition, with an emphasis on Spanish; Sentence processing, with an emphasis on monolingual and bilingual Spanish speakers

Kyle Jerro, Ph.D.
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 217

Research Interests: Semantics, lexical semantics, syntax-semantics interface, language description, Bantu languages, decolonization

Rob Malouf, Ph.D.
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (619) 594-7111 | Office: SHW 201

Research Interests: Computational linguistics, statistical natural language processing, machine learning, constraint-based grammar formalisms, morphosyntactic theory

Betty Samraj, Ph.D.
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 234

Research Interests: English for Specific Purposes, Genre analysis, ESL methodology, Academic writing across disciplines, Systemic-functional linguistics

Naseh Nasrollahi Shahri, Ph.D.
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 248

Research Interests: Second language literacy development, Semiotics, Language, culture and identity, Methodography, Intercultural communication, Second language teacher education

Dris Soulaimani, Ph.D.
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 220

Research Interests: Discourse analysis, language ideologies, and language pedagogy

Jun Takahashi, Ph.D.
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 244

Research Interests: Instructed second language acquisition, second language writing, curriculum and materials development, qualitative research methodologies

Ruey-Jiuan Regina Wu, Ph.D.
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (619) 594-2735 | Office: SHW 242

Research Interests: Conversation analysis; pragmatics; functional linguistics; language assessment; teaching methodologies and language pedagogy

Zheng-sheng Zhang, Ph.D.
Will return in Spring 2026
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 218

Research Interests: Chinese language structure (semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, dialects), Language pedagogy, Technology for language teaching

Lecturers

Helen Adams
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 208

Barbara Bass
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 226

Hyejin Cho
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 203

Ran Dalton
Email: [email protected]

Youniss el Cheddadi
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 203

Stephanie Frame
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 211

Kimberly Hilanto, Ph.D.
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 209

Keiko Ito
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 208

Paul Kalmar
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 219

Hye-Kyoung Kwon, Ph.D.
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 207

Asuka Kuratani
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 205

Shinae Lee
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 208

Brian Mark
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 219

Kendell Padrick
Email: [email protected]
Office: SH 112D

Leticia Pagkalinawan
Email: [email protected],
Office: SHW 203

Rina Pasamonik
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 205

Pooneh Paydar
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 209

Ian Ruston
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 226

Alana Shuster, Ph.D.
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 211

Alicia Stevers, Ph.D.
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 228

Ryan Young
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 228

Ghassan Zakaria
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 219

Teaching Associates (TAs)

Natacha Garbe
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 230

Samuel Hitomi
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 224

Nada Juma
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 230

Tamami Onishi
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 224

Liliana Reyes
Email: [email protected]
Office: SHW 232

Soonja Choi (Korean Program Senior Advisor)
(Ph.D., Buffalo) Language acquisition and cognition. Cross-linguistic studies of the development of syntax, semantics, and morphology in first language acquisition with an emphasis on Korean and English.
Email: [email protected]

Thomas Donahue
(Ph.D. Ohio State) Sociolinguistics and the history of English. Language planning, language and politics, and social structure of slang usage in the U.S. - Mexico border area.

Yoshiko Higurashi
(Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) Phonology, accent and intonation, syllable structure, speech pathology, inter-cultural communication. Japanese language teaching.
Email: [email protected]

Ann Johns
(Ph.D. USC) Materials design, ESL methodology. Interest in socio-cultural influences upon teaching and learning of second language reading and writing.

Jeffrey P. Kaplan
(Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) Syntax, semantics, pragmatics, discourse. Forensic linguistics and application of linguistics to the language of the law.
Email: [email protected]

Ryu Kitajima
(Ph.D., SUNY Buffalo) Teaching and learning strategies. Japanese language acquisition, teaching methodologies
Email: [email protected]

Ghada Osman
(Ph.D., Harvard) Classical Arabic & Islam, Arabic & Islam in the United States, Mental Health Issues

Deborah Poole
(Ph.D., University of Southern California) Classroom discourse, ESL methodology, language socialization. Interest in the relationship of spoken and written language, especially in classroom literacy events.
Email: [email protected]

Gail Robinson
(Ph.D., Stanford University) Second language acquisition and applied linguistics. Particular interest in relationship of first culture to second language and culture acquisition.
Email: [email protected]