Professor Rachel Hayes-Harb Appointed Associate Dean of The Honors College

Linguistics Professor, Rachel Hayes-Harb, has been appointed Associate Dean in the Honors College. She served as Director of the Office of Undergraduate Research and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies from 2014-2021. She has also collaborated with the Office of the Vice President for Research to promote high-quality mentoring in the research context through education and mentor community building. Her scholarship focuses on a variety of phenomena related to the acquisition of the sound systems of new languages by adult learners, specifically the development of sound inventories and the sound structure of words. Her research typically involves experimental investigations of the perception of new sounds and words, and the influence of various types of linguistic experience on adults’ linguistic development. She serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Applied Psycholinguistics, and co-directs the Speech Acquisition Lab, where she collaborates with undergraduate and graduate student researchers.