Our Team – Crow

Crow PIs are guided by our advisory board and work with a wonderful team of undergraduate and graduate researchers (below).

Principal Investigators

Dr. Shelley Staples

is Associate Professor of English Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at University of Arizona. Her research focuses on corpus analyses of speech and writing, particularly for applications to student writing. Her work has recently been published in journals such as Journal of English for Academic Purposes, Written Communication, TESOL Quarterly, and Applied Linguistics.

Dr. Michelle McMullin

is Assistant Professor of English at North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on how attention to human, technical, and institutional infrastructures can help diverse groups of stakeholders respond to complex problems to build more resilient communities. She brings this work to Crow by working on grant funding, developing best practices, and researching the effectiveness of the team’s (digital and human) infrastructure through the lens of Constructive Distributed Work (CDW).

Dr. Aleksandra Swatek

is a Lecturer in the Department of English at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. She obtained her Ph.D. in English / Second Language Studies program at Purdue University, where she specialized in writing research. Her projects encompass the areas of second language writing, corpus linguistics, and English for Academic Purposes.

Dr. Hadi Banat

is an assistant professor of English and the Director of the English as a Second Language (ESL) program at UMass Boston. He is a co-PI of the Transculturation Pedagogical Research Group (writeic.org). He studies multilingual writing, intercultural competence assessment, infrastructure development in collaborative research teams, and writing program administration. His published works appeared in Composition Studies, TESOL Journal, Communication Design Quarterly, Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, and the Publications of the Modern Language Association.

Dr. Bradley Dilger

is Professor of English and Director of Writing at Purdue University. His research on writing programs, networks, and transfer has been published in the Journal of Business & Technical Communication, CCC, Writing Program Administration, and multiple edited collections. With Neil Baird, he is conducting a methodological study of the discourse-based interview. Bradley is a year-round bike commuter, husband of Erin, and dad to Madelyn and Amelia.

Dr. Randi Reppen

is Professor Emerita of Applied Linguistics and TESL at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff AZ. She uses corpus linguistics to better understand how language varies in different contexts of use, and how that can be used to inform materials development and instruction. Dr. Reppen is particularly interested in writing development. She has published numerous articles, chapters, and books, with recent publications in the International Journal of Corpus Linguistics and International Journal of Learner Corpus Research.

Team Members

Dilara Avci

is a first-year doctoral student in Second Language Acquisition & Teaching program at the University of Arizona. She completed her Master’s Degree in Teaching English as a Second Language program at the University of Arizona in 2023. She has taught English across diverse backgrounds and age levels including K-12 and college-level English Composition. Her research interests are second language writing and material design with the application of innovative approaches such as genre pedagogy and corpus linguistics.

Mariana Centanin Bertho

is a PhD student in the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) program at the University of Arizona. She teaches Portuguese at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Her research interests include multilingualism in its sociolinguistics and pedagogical perspectives, teaching Portuguese as an L3, and teaching pronunciation. She has also been working with Teletandem interactions and aims to develop corpus-based research on students’ oral production.

Sarah Buwick

is a senior at Purdue University studying Professional Writing with minors in Communication and Creative Writing. Her career interests include editing, publishing, media writing, and graphic design. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, writing fiction, watching football and baseball, and keeping up with the latest in film and TV.

Bernard Brefo Cassie

is a second-year MA TESL student at the University of Arizona. He has taught first-year writing classes at the University of Ghana and is currently a graduate teaching assistant in the writing program at the University of Arizona. His research interests include corpus linguistics, gamification of L2 learning materials and second language writing.

Chen Chen

is a PhD student in East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona. Her research interests include second language acquisition of Chinese, corpus linguistics, and sociolinguistics. She hopes to learn more computational techniques. In her spare time, she likes to watch funny dog and cat videos ?

Dr. Jianfen Chen

is assistant professor at Towson University. Her research focuses on public rhetoric, comparative rhetoric, and professional and technical communication. Jianfen received her PhD from Purdue, and her MS in Technical Communication from NC State.

Dr. Nina Conrad

received her PhD in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Arizona. She is a Design Researcher for Amplified by Design, a UX design consultancy based in Portland, OR. She enjoys drawing on her background as a writing instructor and researcher to conduct participatory design research with a focus on the role of language and content in the user experience.

Anh T. Dang

is a Master’s student in the English Applied Linguistics program at the University of Arizona. Her research interests are second language writing, multilingualism with the focus on using multilingual resources to assist students in university composition courses, World Englishes and corpus linguistics. She is currently teaching Foundations Writing courses at the UA. In her free time, she enjoys reading, cooking, watching Korean dramas and taking pictures of her cat Miumiu.

Gözde Durgut

is a PhD student in the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) program at the University of Arizona. She holds an MA in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, and is currently teaching First-year Composition at the UofA. Her research interests include L2 writing, corpus linguistics, the applications of AI in language learning and education, as well as learner and user experience research in SLA contexts. Other general areas of interest include human language technology and the intersection of linguistics and computation.

Shaohua Fang

is the Ross-Lynn Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of English at Purdue University. He earned his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Pittsburgh in 2023. Prior to this, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Spring 2024. He was also a CIFLTE Fellow at Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. Fang’s research interests lie in psycholinguistics and second language acquisition, employing a range of methodologies, including experimental and computational approaches. He has published on various topics such as L2 acquisition and processing of temporality, predictive processing in L2, scope phenomena, and experimental research methods. Additionally, he has experience teaching Linguistics and Psycholinguistics courses. At Purdue, he is involved in multiple collaborative projects with researchers from diverse fields, including our friends in the ExLing lab. Learn more about Dr. Fang’s work at https://shaohua-fang.com/.

Mark Fullmer

Dr. Wendy Jie Gao

is a lecturer at the College of Foreign Languages and Literature, Fudan University, Shanghai. Her research interests include language testing, L2 speaking assessment, and English for academic purposes.

Dr. Larissa Goulart

is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Montclair State University. Her research interests include second language writing and register variation. She earned her PhD from Northern Arizona University and has a MA in ELT from Warwick University. She also likes cats, tea, knitting and winning trivia.

Jhonatan Henao-Muñoz

Jhonatan Henao-Muñoz, Lic, M. A.

(he/they – él/elle) is an Assistant Professor of Practice in the W.A. Franke Honors College and UNIV Core Faculty for the Office of General Education at the University of Arizona. He holds three M.A.s in Modern Languages and Literature from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and in Hispanic Linguistics and French Linguistics and Second Language Learning & Teaching from the University of Arizona. Currently he is a PhD Candidate in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics at the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. His research interests are related to Romance Languages as Additional Languages, Inclusive – non/binary Spanish language, Bi/Multilingualism, Translation in the Language Classroom, TELL. Currently, he is working on Corpus Linguistics, specifically on building a Repository for Inclusive Spanish Language. Jhon works mostly with Spanish and French as L2/Ln. Outside academia, he likes to workout, take pictures of flowers, nature, and his cats, Sessho & Michi, and of course eat with friends. He is a food enthusiast.

Adrienne Henson

is a junior at North Carolina State University majoring in English with a concentration in literature and minoring in Rhetoric, Writing and Professional Communication. She has career interests in copywriting, editing and technical writing. In her free time she enjoys reading, journaling, fiction writing, and going to coffee shops with her friends.

Chloe Hunt

is a junior at North Carolina State University majoring in English with a concentration in Professional Writing and Rhetoric. She is drawn to editing and strengthening her writing skills in any area she can get her hands on. Outside of her research interests, she spends her time watching movies, cooking, baking, and listening to music.

Naomi Islas

is a senior at Purdue University studying Professional Writing with two minors in Organizational Leadership and Law and Society, and is also employed for Purdue Dining and Culinary. In the future, she plans to continue her education in the law and society field. In her spare time, Naomi enjoys writing, reading, and collecting vinyl records.

Alona Kladieva

is a PhD student in the SLAT program and a teaching assistant in English Composition at the University of Arizona. Her research interests include second-language writing, genre-based pedagogy and gameful learning. She graduated from MA TESL program and has been teaching English for over five years. She used to teach General English and English for Specific Purposes to professional adults and helped students prepare for language proficiency exams in Ukraine. After coming to the US, she volunteered to teach English to immigrants in a non-profit organization. For fun, she likes reading books, listening to true crime podcasts and spending time outdoors.

Dr. Ge Lan

is an eight-year old “Crowbird”, and he is an assistant professor in the Department of English at City University of Hong Kong. His research interests include corpus linguistics, second language writing, translingual writing, EAP and ESP. He has been building a learner corpus of discipline-specific writing in Hong Kong and has got around 1,000 student papers across four disciplinary genres (scientific reports, technical progress reports, business emails, and timed essays). He plans to merge this learner corpus to the Crow dataset after the completion of his project.

Dr. Aleksey Novikov

recently earned his Ph.D. candidate in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) from the University of Arizona. His academic interests include register variation, L2 Russian syntactic and morphological complexity development, corpus-informed pedagogy and Data-driven Learning (DDL), course design, Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) and more generally, usage-based approaches to L2 language learning and teaching in English and Russian.

Dr. Emily Palese

is a graduate from the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) program at the University of Arizona. As as the Assistant Director of International Foundations Writing (IFW) and a Professor of Practice at the University of Arizona, her work includes curriculum development, instructional support, program assessment, and teaching courses within English Applied Linguistics. In her free time, she enjoys running, gardening, playing her with dogs, and caring for her pet goats and chickens.

Dr. Nicole Schmidt

Dr. Nicole Schmidt,

a graduate of Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT), is an Instructional Designer for Digital Learning at the University of Arizona. Her current work focuses on course development for UA Global’s microcampus program. Nicole has also taught undergraduate composition, including Technical and Professional Writing, in both online and in-person formats. Before that, she taught English for Academic Purposes in the U.S., Japan, the Netherlands, and Spain. In her spare time, Nicole loves to visit places she’s never been, read mainly historical fiction, experiment with baking, and spend time out of doors, preferably near water.

Dr. Ji-young Shin

is Assistant Professor of Language Studies and Education Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Her primary research interests are language testing/assessment, corpus linguistics, educational technology, and research methodology. Ji-young’s research has been informed by her various professional roles as a former high school teacher, textbook writer, national exam writer, and national English writing curriculum developer.

Hui Wang

is a Ph.D. student in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) at University of Arizona. She works as a Graduate Assistant Director and also Graduate Teaching Associate in the Writing Program, teaching Foundations Writing Courses at the UofA. Her research interests include second language writing, corpus linguistics, genre-based pedagogy, Technology-enhanced Language Learning (TELL), and teacher education. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, traveling and playing with her dog Denali.

Yuwei Wang

is a second year Ph.D. student in Chinese Linguistics, East Asian Studies. She has been graduated from North Eastern Normal University of China with her Bachelor and Master’s degree in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language. She had former teaching experience in China and in Korea as a Chinese instructor, and had been working in Chinese publishing industry for four years. Her research interest is second language acquisition.

Dr. Shelton Weech

is an assistant professor of technical communication at Utah Valley University. His research interests include technical and professional communication, environmental communication, science communication, and public rhetoric. He received his MA in American Literature from Brigham Young University in 2007 and his PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from Purdue University in 2023. He has also worked with Microsoft and the Microsoft Partner Network.

Wei Xu

is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) program at the University of Arizona. She holds an MA degree in TESOL and is currently working as Graduate Assistant Director (GAD) for the International Writing Program, English Department. She has taught ESL courses in various contexts and Foundations Writing at UofA. Her research interests include genre studies, multimodal composition, and second language writing.

Dr. Ali Yaylali

is an assistant professor of education at Eastern Kentucky University. He earned his PhD in Language, Reading, and Culture (LRC) from the University of Arizona. Before starting his doctorate, he taught ESL and Turkish in the U.S. public schools. His academic interests include English learners’ science writing development, corpus pedagogy in language classrooms, content area and disciplinary literacy development, transformative learning frameworks in teacher education, and discourses of education.

Former Crowbirds

Dr. Beril Tezeller Arik, Nuh Naci Yazgan University (Purdue)
Dr. Lauren Brentnell, University of Northern Colorado (Michigan State)
Hannah Brostrom, Purdue
Dr. Tony Bushner, University of Michigan (Purdue)
Olga Chumakova, Arizona
Ryan Day, Purdue
Lindsay DeQuick, NC State
Abby Elkin, Purdue
Hannah Morgan Gill, Case Western Reserve University (Arizona)
Curtis Green, Michigan State (Arizona)
Dr. Bill Hart-Davidson, Michigan State
Alec Horner, NC State
Alantis Houpt, Arizona
Dr. Ashley Joetta, 2A Consulting (Purdue & UW-Bothell)
Emily Ruth Jones, Bannon Hill Publishing (Purdue)
Kati Juhlin, Arizona
Samantha Kirby, Arizona
Nik Kirstein, Arizona
Kimberly Laney, Arizona
Dr. Yingliang Liu, Wuhan University of Technology (Arizona)
Dr. Lindsey Macdonald, Purdue
David Marsh, National Institute of Technology, Wakayama College, Japan
Kelly Marshall, Arizona
Sarah Merryman, Purdue Libraries (Purdue)
Vivek Natarajan, Purdue
Blair Newton, Purdue
Dr. Adriana Picoral, University of Arizona (Arizona)
Samantha Pate Rappuhn, Ivy Tech Kokomo (Purdue)
Kevin Sanchez, Arizona
Anna Shura, Purdue
Justin Squires, Arizona
Echo Yiqiu Yan, University of Texas (Purdue)
Dr. Zhaozhe (Terrence) Wang, University of Toronto (Purdue)
Louis Wyatt, Purdue