I’ve known Colleen since we were both PhD students at The University of Melbourne. When I found out that she had also moved to La Trobe, it was lovely to have a friendly face around the place! Colleen has taken a slightly unusual, but increasingly common, lateral step; although she’s no longer working in linguist research she’s still working at a university and running courses. She kindly agreed to be interviewed about her work.
What did you study at university?
For
undergrad I studied a BA (Languages) at Monash University (in Melbourne, Australia). I did a double major
- Chinese and Linguistics. I also did a minor in Spanish to satisfy the
“languages” part. Originally I wanted to work as a translator at the UN!
When I realised that probably wouldn’t work out, I pursued Linguistics
for Honours. My thesis looked at the efficacy
of using the first four formants of certain vowels to distinguish one
speaker from another.
After Honours I got a job as a Research Assistant at The University of Melbourne in Otolaryngology (now Audiology
and Speech Pathology). My PhD topic was a response to what I’d been
hearing and experiencing in working with individuals using cochlear
implants. I looked at the perception and production of some aspects of
prosody in adolescents who had grown up with cochlear
implants as
their only hearing.
What is your job?
I’m
the Deputy Coordinator for the first year of a range of Allied Health
Courses. There’s about 2000 students across six campuses, so it’s huge! I
mainly look after those courses where
the teaching involves external partners. There’s a lot to do around
compliance and reporting for these third party teaching contracts. I
also teach myself – I teach a Work Integrated Learning subject that’s
open to all students from the College of Science,
Health and Engineering. They go out on placement and we look at career
management and how to utilize what’s learnt on placement out in the job
market. I also teach an Industry Innovation subject that brings students
together from all over the uni. They work
in small teams to tackle wicked problems.
How does your linguistics training help you in your job?
A
lot at The University of Melbourne because I’m still involved in research. At La Trobe it does help,
particularly when you need to advise students
who are struggling. I used to teach in the Master of Speech Pathology at the University of Melbourne and between that and Linguistics I’ve gained a wide perspective on
what could be going on when someone is struggling in first year.
Linguistics also helps in the subjects I teach at La Trobe. It’s great to be able to provide very specific advice for students
as to their writing and how to improve it. I also try to slip in activities on intercultural
communication where I can.
Do you gave any advice do you wish someone had given to you
about linguistics/careers/university?
I
wish they had been more honest about studying languages (not
linguistics) as a career. I realised after awhile that
people born into bi- or multilingual households would be the ones
landing the interpreter/translator jobs, although I don’t regret
studying languages. I think in general I would have appreciated some
advice re jobs that you could go onto with Linguistics. I’m
assuming they’re better at that now but we really received no career
advice at all. For those doing PhDs I think we do well on the research
training side, but not so well on the careers side, both in talking
about potential industries you could go into and
about what a career in academia actually entails.
Any other thoughts or comments?
I’d like to say something about how Linguistics is so undervalued but I’m not sure how to put it. I feel like perceiving,
producing, communicating is something so fundamental that linguistics should be a standard part of everything!
