Culture and language are the lenses I use to view the world. My work as a designer or consultant depends on the skills I developed as an anthropologist.My undergraduate degree is a BA in Linguistics and Antropology from USC. My father worked for the university, so I was literally a part of the Trojan family. Even though my father’s moved on to greener pastures, I remain a proud Trojan. Perhaps the best experience I had in college was working with education reform through the Neighborhood Academic Initiative. I was active in the student community. I was a member of the Cross Country team my first year, a Resident Advisor the second, and a co-ordinator for Student/Faculty mixers the third and fourth years, as well as a part time waiter and valet parker. Fight On!

Linguistics

The linguistics department is a top-notch program. I was most interested in language, its structure and use in society. Dr. Ed Finegan taught me the importance of language in society.I studied language acquisition with Dr. Bill Rutherford, who is known amongst Second Language Acquisition researchers for his work with Thresholds of Langauge Learning. L2 acquisition takes place in a series of increasingly complicated steps through an “interlangauge” that has grammatical and phonetic characteristics of the native language in the target langauge.

Anthropology

For my fieldwork and methodology course I visited Disneyland once a week. I still love anthropology because the focus of study is always people and their use of tools. In many ways, anthropology and educational technology have a lot in common. I have no doubt that my studies of foreign cultures lead to my decision to live abroad for nearly six years.In the department I worked with Dr. Chin Soo Young, volunteering my time helping her prepare for publication. I think anthropology is still a part of my everyday life.