35.1368, Former Staff Spotlight: Clare Harshey Treutel

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-35-1368. Wed May 01 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.1368, Former Staff Spotlight: Clare Harshey Treutel

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Editor for this issue: Justin Fuller <justin at linguistlist.org>

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Date: 01-May-2024
From: Justin Fuller [justin at linguistlist.org]
Subject: Former Staff Spotlight: Clare Harshey Treutel


During this year's Fund Drive, we want to take a moment to reflect on
the impact that the LINGUIST List has had on its staff--past and
present. Today, we're spotlighting a former LINGUIST List staff
member, Clare Harshey Treutel.

Clare reflects:

Dear LINGUIST Listers,

My name is Clare, and I’m an alumna of the LINGUIST List. I edited the
jobs, supports, internships, and reviews areas between 2016 and 2018
while working on my MS in Computational Linguistics at Indiana
University. I am writing you today to update you on the impact that
those few years had on my life, and the impact your money has when you
generously donate to the LINGUIST List.

After my time as an editor, I went on to work as a computer scientist
specializing in machine learning and information retrieval. My
linguistics background has often been unusual among my teammates, but
it has also been a major advantage. Language is everywhere, and
affects everyone. Understanding the mechanisms of human language is
key to all kinds of scientific, business, legal and logistics
problems. Even when working with non-language data, I have often
relied on my education in linguistics to recontextualize a problem as
if it were about language, coming up with an out-of-the-box idea for a
new way to approach the data.

After five years of this kind of work, I decided I wanted to further
refine my professional specialization. Last year, I began working on a
PhD in Biomedical Informatics at the University of Cincinnati and
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Here, too, my linguistics background
is unusual among others in my program, who often previously studied
computer science, biology, or engineering of some kind. But I am
thankful again to be the odd duck - to have the holistic perspective
that my education in linguistics has afforded me. In a world where
transformers and large language models generate an awful lot of hype,
it’s more important than ever that we see language as, first and
foremost, a human phenomenon. It is still critical to understand
grammar, dialectal variation, sociolinguistics, and more - not on a
mathematical level, but on a truly linguistic level. So while large
language models are revolutionizing the possibilities, I still believe
that the field of linguistics is critical for the future of ethical
and intelligent science.

My time at the LINGUIST List allowed me to become the scientist and
student that I am today. I’ll forever be grateful for the opportunity
to study at IU, to help facilitate our website and mailing list, to
interact with many of you, to develop awareness of our field and to
develop my love for linguistics. My years as an editor were truly
special to me, not least because the LINGUIST List is such a special
organization.

To those of you who donated in the past, thank you from the bottom of
my heart for your generosity. And if you haven’t yet donated, please
consider doing so to support the LINGUIST List, the vital role it
plays in our field, and the hard-working students who keep the whole
thing running.

Sincerely yours,

Clare Harshey Treutel
________________________________

The LINGUIST List needs your help! Please help us continue providing
our services by making a donation to our Fund Drive at
https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate.



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