Dan Dewey has been appointed as department chair for the Department of Linguistics. Dewey succeeds Norm Evans, who has served in this capacity for the past few years. “During his time as chair, Norm has overseen some very important departmental developments, including a large number of new hires. He has also facilitated more effective mentoring and curriculum design.”
As a specialist in the studies of second-language acquisition, Dewey analyzes not just the languages that learners acquire but also the social, psychological, cognitive, and neurological variables that influence language acquisition. He teaches first- and second-language acquisition, pragmatics and nonverbal communication, and neurolinguistics. Dean J. Scott Miller remarked, “Given Dan’s depth of prior leadership, especially his service as associate chair for many years, and his remarkable achievements in scholarship, I believe he will be an effective department leader.”