Achievement

Our 'Common Ground' weekly seminar is attended by all trainees, IGERT-affiliated postdocs, several faculty, and several non-trainee students and researchers. Participants uniformly comment on the strong collegiality that has emerged. The seminar mixes sessions in which trainees present their own work with sessions in which participants present and analyze research related to upcoming talks by preeminent visitors in language science. Trainees refine their abilities to communicate across disciplinary boundaries, develop a working knowledge of methods and frameworks from other disciplines, and develop their own research studies with an unusually rich set of inputs from faculty and other students. Trainees also obtain constructive feedback and advice during practice talks and presentations in preparation for conferences or other professional talks. Trainees are connected with a network of people outside their home departments with whom they would likely not have interacted otherwise.