Professional Development Activity 1

Georgia State University

Applied Linguistics
Spring 2010
Jonathan Shive

Today our class for Dr Murphy went to a Professional Department activity. It was
basically a job interview presentation by an applicant Dr. Scott Crossley. He is applying
for a position in the department and had to do a presentation for the application process.
So Dr. Murphy invited our class to attend the presentation. Dr. Crossley comes from
Mississippi State University where he was an assistant professor. His presentation was
about computer-based programs used to analyze language. He also talked a lot about
computational algorithms and how they relate to looking into natural language and
honestly that was over my head.
This was my second semester in the program and I still feel like I am a fish out of
water. I wish I could have taken General Linguistics first in my program. I feel real
unprepared and didnt really get was he was presenting on. He also talked about corpus
linguistics and I assumed it was related to dead languages at first. Also I didnt know we
could use this activity as a professional development activity until after we were done. If
I had known I would have taken better notes.
I do think it was a good idea to include the students in on the evaluation process
for hiring faculty. There was an evaluation form passed out at the end of his presentation.
It gives validity to students that we matter and it was noted by a few of us. All in all, he

seems like a well spoken, talented instructor. He have some interesting (at least in my
limited knowledge) specialties that could be of benefit to the program and students. I
havent heard about any of the other candidates, I guess well hear about those
presentations coming up. But he seems like a good choice.