Thanks to some hybrid programming, I was able to attend the Linguistic Society of America and the American Dialect Society annual meetings. LSA was planned as hybrid, but many people canceled their trips due to COVID, and ADS pivoted from all in-person to all-online in about a week!  I'm glad I could attend from home on short notice. The Word of the Year was just as lively over Zoom as in person, with 400 people participating and a Twitch-worthy chat scrolling speed!

I've started a new multi-site collaboration with linguistics profs at OSU (Sara Loss & Nathan Horton), Northern Arizona (Okim Kang), and Oregon (Melissa Baese-Berk) about supporting cross-cultural communication in college classrooms. We are implementing various inter-group contact activities and accent familiarization training with college freshmen and international TAs to improve inter-cultural communication, attitudes, and mutual understanding.