My name is Jessica Fox, and I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Second Language Studies. As I look back over the trajectory of my academic career, an interdisciplinary approach to language study has been at the core. I graduated from Calvin College in 2009 with a B.A. in Speech Language Pathology and Audiology and a minor in Linguistics. Alongside my major and minor course requirements, I studied Spanish, American Sign Language, and Dutch. Next I pursued an M.A. in Linguistics at Indiana University, where I continued to study Dutch language and culture and began lessons in Indonesian to fulfill an exotic language requirement. In my second year of the program, I grew more intrigued by the department “across the hall”: second language studies, and I had the opportunity to enroll in several of the classes. These courses helped form a critical bridge for me from linguistic theory to practice. 

Upon completion of my M.A., I served as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant at an Indonesian high school for nine months. This time was not long enough, so I joined Department of State-funded English Language Fellows Program for another two years, and taught in the capital city at a national police language academy and on a rural, tropical island at a regional university. Teaching English abroad and operating in the Indonesian language were exciting and challenging for three years; nevertheless, I was eager to return to the United States in 2014 and join the Michigan State University Second Language Studies Program.

During my time in the SLS program, my research interests have ranged from qualitative approaches, language testing and assessment, to psycholinguistics. I have had the opportunity to serve as a research assistant for Dr. Peter De Costa, Drs. Susan Gass and Paula Winke on the Flagship Proficiency Grant, and the English Language Center Testing Office. My dissertation focuses on the impact of mood induction – as measured by periodic self-reports and changes in physiology (i.e., heart rate, heart rate variability, and sweat levels) – on novice language learners’ vocabulary acquisition of Indonesian nouns. This psycholinguistic project is a novel area of research in SLS, and I have particularly enjoyed collaborating with colleagues in the MSU clinical psychophysiology lab. I plan to defend my dissertation in Spring 2017.