This year we catch up with six alums — from 2003 up to 2025! — reporting back on what they are doing now, what they’ve found surprising and challenging in their new roles, and what they’ve carried with them from their time at UBC.
Michael McAuliffe (Ph.D. 2015)
During my postdoc at McGill University, I developed Montreal Forced Aligner (MFA) which generates time stamps for words and speech sounds for audio recordings. I still consult and do contract work for MFA, both for McGill and for companies that use MFA.
Right now, I’m a half-time remote Scientist for the Waisman Center at University of Wisconsin-Madison in Katie Hustad’s lab. The project’s overall objective is to generate growth curves for speech sound acquisition that can be used in early detection of children’s motor speech impairments. Like most speech technology, MFA is developed with adult speech corpora, so it will struggle with even typically-developing children, due to their shorter vocal tract lengths, slower speech rates, and so on. If the child speaking has a motor speech impairment, that may complicate matters further. So my current job is to work on identifying MFA alignment errors that compromise downstream analyses.
I spent 5 years in industry at Amazon, and I think one of the most challenging things about my career trajectory has been navigating the industry/academia divide. It was very nice to be able to close my laptop at 5pm every day and not have to think about work, but I did miss conferences, seeing colleagues and hearing about research.
The most valuable part [of my UBC training] was always the supervision of my thesis advisor, Molly Babel, who was amazing in both providing structure and deadlines as well as freedom and pure enthusiasm for random side projects that often didn’t go anywhere. I also really miss the labs in Stores Road and ISRL, the social/collaborative lab environment, and the environment of the first couple of years in the program, and general grad student solidarity from other cohorts.
Akie Leesmith (B.A. Major in Linguistics, Minor in French, 2025)
After graduating I decided to take a gap year, traveling to Europe and Mexico, before heading back to UBC to do a teaching degree (B.Ed.) to teach French. On my trip I was able to practice my French in France through a month-long program called SYLE with the international organization Servas. During the rest of the past year, I have dabbled in various work environments to save up for teaching school. I am currently working as an Activity Leader for the YMCA, where I run activities for Elementary school aged kids before and after school.
The best thing about my current career trajectory is that I will be able to create the language-learning environment that I always wanted; one that focuses on practice and projects, rather than lectures and tests. The most challenging thing about my career trajectory for me is the knowledge that the job is very demanding and stressful! Sometimes I get anxious about whether I will be able to manage the stress of teaching, but most of the time I am just excited.
Akie on the Irish island Inishmore
Right now: I honestly miss talking through linguistic problems in class, with all my fellow linguist friends! I love the problem-solving aspect of linguistics and unfortunately there are not many situations outside of a linguistics degree where you get to discuss that kind of language data. However: I also think that an understanding of language acquisition, how grammar/phonology/semantics is similar and different between languages, and how languages develop, is enormously helpful in teaching a second language! I absolutely plan to incorporate my linguistic training into my teaching. Learning about linguistics allowed me to learn French more easily, and I think it could help others too.
Chenhao Chiu (Ph.D, 2016)
Currently, I am an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of Linguistics, National Taiwan University. My research focuses on how people produce and control speech, combining linguistic analysis with methods from robotics, human interaction, and language technology. I am interested in how multimodal speech production data — articulatory movement, facial motion, and physiological signals — can help improve human–computer interaction and contribute to the development of more natural and adaptive intelligent systems.
I would say the most challenging — and also, in some ways, the most surprising — part of my current career has been learning how to balance academic work with leadership and administrative responsibilities. When I first began taking on administrative positions, many situations felt quite frustrating; learning how to manage people, make difficult decisions and communicate across different perspectives has been a long process of trial, reflection, and gradual growth. Looking back, I realize that a large part of academic life is not only about developing expertise in research, but also about learning how to build and support a community.
What I learned at UBC was that good research does not always begin with something flashy or highly technical; it often starts with asking a clear question and approaching it from a reasonable and thoughtful angle. This way of thinking — being curious, flexible, and willing to triangulate evidence from multiple sources — has become an essential part of how I conduct research and mentor students today. What I miss the most about UBC Linguistics is the strong culture of interdisciplinary collaboration. Linguistics and speech sciences naturally connect with so many other fields, and UBC created an environment where these interactions felt very natural and encouraging.
Rosemary Hu 胡昕禾 (B.A. Speech Sciences, 2020)
I just finished law school from the University of Victoria. I am graduating with my JD/JID (Juris Doctor/ Juris Indigenarum Doctor) which is a 4 year long joint degree program in Canadian common law and Indigenous legal orders. I will be articling with a union side labour law firm in Victoria, called Victory Square Law. My work will be at the intersection of human rights and labour law, working to advance workers’ autonomy and dignity by e.g. advocating for a disabled worker who has faced alleged discriminatory termination, and trying to help them get their job back.
After my Speech Sciences undergrad degree, I applied to 4 Canadian linguistics grad schools and got rejected from all of them. But I thought about how conducting research in Gitksan lab was a highlight of my undergrad, and I isolated the thread of how working in support of Indigenous communities was one aspect of linguistics fieldwork that I really loved. This, combined with my social justice advocacy passions, led me to my current career path.
Honestly the majority of my Linguistics courses, and my fieldwork experiences, have all been valuable training for my current career. Law and language are completely tied together. Legal work is about creative problem-solving, and about picking apart language and cases to argue in the most persuasive way possible. So in short, everything about my degree has been useful!
I miss elicitations with the Gitksan language speakers that I had the privilege of working with: Hector, Barbara, and Vince to name a few. I also miss going to Bean Around the World with a prof or friend. … Now that I’m graduated and finally have more spare time and brain space, I’m hoping to sew my first pair of pants. [Ed comment: this is an amazing goal, and we encourage any and all alums who have sewn their own pants to get in touch.]
Marie Jetté (B.A., Linguistics and Speech Sciences, 2003)
Drs Marie Jette and Anthony Law at the 2025 Fall Voice Conference, Emory University
I’m currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and a speech-language pathologist specializing in voice and upper airway disorders. My clinical and research work focuses on chronic cough, laryngeal disorders, and the neuroscience of airway sensation and cough suppression. I’m in the process of transitioning to Stanford University, where I’ll continue building a research program focused on voice and upper airway disorders, including chronic cough.
The most surprising part of my career has honestly been how interdisciplinary it’s become! As an undergraduate in Linguistics, I never imagined I would one day be collaborating with neuroscientists, pulmonologists, otolaryngologists, and pharmacists on NIH-funded imaging studies. The best part has been the opportunity to work directly with patients, while also helping advance scientific understanding and mentoring the next generation of clinicians and researchers.
UBC Linguistics taught me how to think analytically about human communication and behavior. My training in linguistics also gave me a strong foundation in phonetics and speech science that directly shaped my path into speech-language pathology and voice research. I talk about the International Phonetic Alphabet all the time!
Terrance Gatchalian (B.A. Linguistics, 2019)
Terrance at SULAAA, May 2026
Right now, I’m a Postdoctoral Fellow in Linguistics at the University of Toronto. I’m involved mostly primarily with a project on Labrador Inuktitut, and I’m continuing my work with Kanien’kéha (which I began during my PhD at McGill) and on Ktunaxa (which I began during undergrad at UBC!) My linguistic research mostly focuses on temporal meanings and verb classes, but beyond this I’m also involved with language teaching (for Ktunaxa) and trying to understand more deeply the role linguists have in language revitalization.
The emphasis on fieldwork and good elicitation methods that UBC provided was indispensable to all of my work. I have many memories of conversations, both in the classroom and outside of it, that spoke to the importance of making sure my work remains grounded in the communities that I work with. These experiences are incredibly valuable for shaping how I think about linguistics as a whole.
I was back on UBC campus recently for a conference, and I definitely miss being able to take a break from work at the beach or Pacific Spirit. But I’m still thinking towards the west: I’m excited about a project piloting a grammar sketch for Ktunaxa (with team members at UBC Linguistics) and a project editing old Ktunaxa texts, both starting very soon.
