While Michigan State University’s Second Language Studies (SLS) Ph.D. program may have started by being in the right place at the right time, the efforts made by its administrators, faculty, alumni, and students have propelled the program into an international powerhouse.
During the 20th anniversary celebration held Oct. 17-19, 2025, students, faculty, and alums of the program shared their experiences, their research, and the journey to create this award-winning program, which is now one of the top doctoral programs of its kind in the world.
“It’s absolutely amazing to see the program thriving,” said Susan Gass, Professor Emerita and founding Director. “Everyone contributed whatever needed to be done and we were all committed to preparing future faculty members, leaders, and scholars. We really were in the right place at the right time.”
From its auspicious origins in 2005 with a cohort of 12 students and eight core faculty members, whose dedication cemented MSU’s dominance in the field, the SLS Ph.D. program now boasts 21 students and 97 alumni, many of whom are making a far-reaching impact in the field of second language acquisition. During the anniversary celebration, many of those alumni joined the event in person or tuned in to the zoom session from China, South Korea, Japan, and other places around the world.
“It’s absolutely amazing to see the program thriving. Everyone contributed whatever needed to be done and we were all committed to preparing future faculty members, leaders, and scholars.”
Susan Gass, Professor Emerita and founding Director
Shawn Loewen, Professor and current SLS Director, shared that alumni of the program have contributed 1,203 scholarly articles and books – a huge footprint in the academic publishing world. Additionally, more than 20 percent of current students and alumni have published their qualifying research papers, which serve as the comprehensive exam for the program and a publication opportunity for students. The faculty of the program also have been highly productive in their research with a combined total of more than 100,000 citations on Google Scholar.
MSU’s SLS program offers an interdisciplinary doctoral degree in applied linguistics within the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures. Students are provided a firm foundation in the fields of second language acquisition, applied linguistics, and foreign language studies while exploring how those fields intersect with bilingualism, corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, educational linguistics, pragmatics, and language assessment. Students also learn how to apply theories and methods from these fields to current second language and foreign language research and teaching as they pursue their careers beyond MSU. In 2018, the program was honored with the Outstanding Graduate Program Community Award presented by MSU’s Graduate School.
During Gass’ presentation, “In the Beginning…,” at the anniversary celebration, she shared her own search for a degree program in languages that didn’t focus on literature, but on a combination of linguistics, language acquisition, and more.
“It was a fight for the validity of the data sources in second language acquisition and again in linguistics,” she said.
Nevertheless, Gass persisted. She obtained her Ph.D. and began the journey to create the program she needed. MSU’s reputation for its master’s program in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESOL) made it a natural fit to expand with an SLS doctoral program. In 2001, the final version of the program was presented to Wendy Wilkinson, then-Dean of the College of Arts & Letters.
New faculty, new courses, and a generous award of research and teaching assistantships helped propel the SLS program to national prominence in just 10 years, Gass said. However, despite its growth and prominence, MSU’s SLS Ph.D. program maintains a warm, family feel where students and faculty create lifelong bonds.
“For the next 20 years, a lot of what I’m going to be expected to do, I got the experience here. I feel very well prepared to begin my career.”
Carlos Cinaglia, May 2025 SLS Ph.D. graduate
Carlos Cinaglia, who graduated in May 2025 as the 97th graduate of the program, is now an Assistant Professor of Second Language Education in the School of Teacher Education at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.
“For the next 20 years, a lot of what I’m going to be expected to do, I got the experience here,” he said. “I feel very well prepared to begin my career.”
Cinaglia joins Amy S. Thompson at Florida State University. Thompson is the first graduate of MSU’s SLS Ph.D. program and now serves as Florida State University’s Mack and Effie Campbell Distinguished Professor and Director of the School of Teacher Education in the Anne Spencer Daves College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences. She recently received the Association of Language Departments Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession presented by the Modern Language Association.
“The SLS program at Michigan State, and Michigan State more broadly, informed my faculty philosophy, research philosophy, but also leadership philosophy,” Thompson said. “Coming from a strong program like the SLS program at MSU gave me the opportunity to start strong. I feel that MSU, in a way, made it possible for me to be the person and the scholar that I am today. I feel very fortunate to have gone through the SLS program and to be an alumna of Michigan State.”
Jeffrey Maloney, who graduated from MSU’s SLS Ph.D. program in 2018, now serves as an Assistant Professor at Brigham Young University–Hawaii. He strives to show his students the same commitment he experienced at MSU.
“I remain optimistic that the strong foundation established during the SLS program’s first 20 years will position it well for continued growth and success in the decades ahead.”
Shawn Loewen, Professor and SLS Director
“The faculty were always so warm and caring,” he said. “That’s what I carry forth to my students. They genuinely cared about us as students and future colleagues.”
Over the course of its 20-year history, MSU’s SLS Ph.D. program has had three people who have led the program by serving as its director. Gass was the director from 2005 to 2017. Loewen held the position from 2017 to 2020 and then took over again in Fall 2024. From 2020 to 2024, Professor Paula Winke served as the director.
Looking ahead to the next 20 years, Loewen is optimistic, but knows massive changes will drive much of the program.
“My hope is that the SLS program will continue to thrive over the next 20 years,” he said. “The strength of its faculty, students, and alumni — clearly evident at the homecoming events — gives me great confidence in its ongoing success. At the same time, the program will need to adapt to the opportunities and challenges that artificial intelligence brings to the field of second language learning and teaching. Other systemic issues also warrant attention. Higher education, as a whole, is undergoing rapid change, and financial pressures at MSU and within the College of Arts & Letters contribute to uncertainty about the future. Nevertheless, I remain optimistic that the strong foundation established during the SLS program’s first 20 years will position it well for continued growth and success in the decades ahead.”
By Colleen Gehoski Steinman
