H. Craig Melchert Endowed Fund for Linguistics

H. Craig Melchert Endowed Fund

Scholarships are available to eligible undergraduate students to defray some of the costs associated with travel to summer schools and to conferences.

About Dr. Melchert

H. Craig Melchert is A. Richard Diebold Professor of Indo-European Studies & Professor of Linguistics, Emeritus, at University of California at Los Angeles. He received an BA in German from MSU in 1967, and a PhD in Linguistics from Harvard in 1977. From 1978 to 2007 he taught at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, moving to UCLA in 2007.

Professor Melchert is a historical linguist, and is one of the world’s leading experts on Hittite and Luwian, Anatolian languages spoken in the 17th to 12th centuries BCE, as well as Lycian, a later Anatolian language spoken in 500-200 BCE. Hittite is one of the earliest attested Indo-European languages. All existing Hittite texts are written in cuneiform on clay tablets while Lycian texts are from stone inscriptions written in the Lycian alphabet, which is closely related to the Greek alphabet.

Professor Melchert has written six books and more than 150 articles on these languages, and continues to write and research about them.

He has endowed a merit-based scholarship fund to advance student research and training in Linguistics. 

Purpose and award amounts

The scholarship is to defray some of the costs associated with travel to Summer Schools and to Conferences. The award amounts are typically a minimum of $400 for Conferences, and a minimum of $500 for Summer Schools. Award amounts may vary from year to year.

Eligibility

All Linguistics undergraduate students, both majors and minors, are eligible to apply for a scholarship. This includes BA-MA students who have not yet accumulated the minimum number of credits required for a first bachelor’s degree, and so are not yet eligible for graduate research support.

Summer schools

Here are some examples of Summer Schools, which typically offer a variety of courses and workshops:

  • European Summer School in Language, Logic, and Information (ESSLLI)
  • North American Summer School in Language, Logic, and Information (NASSLLI)
  • Information and Logic in Amsterdam
  • LSA Institute
  • Crete Summer School in Linguistics (CreteLing)

‘Summer School’ is a cover term used because most schools do actually take place in the Summer, but there may also be schools that take place at other times of the year, and they are of course equally relevant. 

The deadline to apply for Summer Schools that take place in the summer is May 1. Applications for other Schools will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

Students are advised to talk with their Linguistics professors and TAs about summer schools that may be offered at the time of application

Conferences

Applications for Conference travel will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Students are expected to present at the Conference; however, acceptance to the Conference is not necessary prior to submitting an application form.

Application procedure

The student application form is available at this link:

Student form

Students must have the support of a faculty member in Linguistics. The support form for faculty members is available at this link:

Faculty form

If you receive a scholarship

As a matter of courtesy, if you are a recipient of a Melchert Scholarship, once you return from your Summer School or Conference, you will be expected to write a report within two weeks, essentially a letter to Dr. Melchert, stating how you benefited from the award.

Questions

If you have any questions, please contact the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Linguistics, Dr. Alan Munn, amunn@msu.edu.