MSU’s English department bestows inaugural ‘Wendy Herd’ award in memory of late professor
The Department of English at Mississippi State University presented its inaugural Wendy Herd Award for Research in Linguistics this spring in honor and memory of the late Wendy Herd, former director of MSU’s Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) program and founder of the department’s Linguistics Research Laboratory.
Jacob “Jake” Pritchard—a Memphis native and May 2022 MSU graduate with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and religion and a minor in linguistics—received the Wendy Herd Award for Research in Linguistics at the 2022 Linguistics and TESOL celebration on May 11. The English department plans to present this award annually to the student whose original research in linguistics most closely approaches professional standards for the field. Winners receive a monetary gift and have their name added to a permanent plaque in the English department.
Pritchard was selected for his paper, “Output and phonological distinction: The application of the Output Hypothesis to the acquisition of Italian geminate consonants by native English speakers,” which he wrote for his Fall 2021 class, Studies on Second Language Acquisition.
“It is an immense honor to have won the Wendy Herd Award and to be recognized for my contribution to the MSU linguistics division,” Pritchard said. “Language is at the center of human culture and society. The more we can study language and understand it, the more we can understand ourselves, both in our past and in our present. I am very grateful to the staff in the department, especially Dr. Pizer and Dr. Megan Smith, who taught me so much about how we communicate with each other, and I am grateful to Mississippi State for giving me such incredible opportunities in my undergraduate studies.”
Ginger Pizer, an associate professor in the English department and chair of the award committee, said, “Although Jake didn’t get the chance to take the class with Wendy, she is the one who had previously redesigned the class into a research training class in which each student runs a pilot study they write up for their final paper and present at a poster session at the end of the semester. It is very appropriate that the first winner of the award came from that class.”
Pizer said Herd had an “enormous effect” on the linguistics and TESOL programs at MSU and shaped them in “long-lasting” ways.
“Her own research into the production and perception of speech sounds was continually revealing new and important information, both about how we learn new sounds when we’re learning second languages and about the sounds of Mississippi English, which is significantly understudied,” Pizer said. “Even cancer didn’t slow her research productivity. She won multiple grants both for her research and for the TESOL program, expanding its reach in training both pre-service and in-service teachers in Mississippi to work effectively with English Language Learners. She was a remarkable colleague, friend and human being. We are confident her legacy will continue here at Mississippi State.”
Herd received the Oldham Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award in 2019 and was named the 2017 Humanities Teacher of the Year for MSU. In 2012, she was awarded an Ottilie Schillig Special Teaching Grant and a College of Arts and Sciences Henry Family Research Fund Grant the following year.
Herd’s research was featured in Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics; the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America; and in Proceedings of Meetings in Acoustics.
The Wendy Herd Award for Research in Linguistics is an open fund with the Department of English. To contribute to the award, please contact Sara Frederic, director of development, at 662-325-3240 or email sfrederic@foundation.msstate.edu.
For more details about the Department of English, visit www.english.msstate.eduwww.english.msstate.edu.
MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.