Ph.D. Students Granted 2024-25 Dietrich Fellowships
By Karen Richters
Adam A. Bramlett and Botagoz Tusmagambet, students in the Applied Linguistics & Second Language Acquisition doctoral program, have both been awarded prestigious fellowships by the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Adam A. Bramlett Awarded Graduate Assessment Fellowship
Adam A. Bramlett has been awarded the prestigious Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences' Graduate Assessment Fellowship for the 2024-2025 academic year. The fellowship, hosted by the Dietrich College Dean’s Office, provides advanced training and hands-on experience in academic program assessment, focusing on leveraging data to optimize student learning outcomes.
Bramlett's exceptional skills in data wrangling, data visualization and statistical analysis made him a standout candidate. As a Graduate Assessment Fellow, he will develop and refine innovative assessment methodologies, transforming complex data sets into actionable insights. His interdisciplinary collaboration across various departments will ensure robust assessment practices are aligned with the college’s strategic goals, significantly enhancing the evaluation and improvement of academic programs.
During the fellowship, Bramlett will focus on designing and testing assessment instruments for the Computational Thinking and Scientific Inquiry learning outcomes. His responsibilities include reviewing literature, gathering data on assessment instruments, mapping coursework activities to learning outcomes and evaluating computational tools for program assessment.
Botagoz Tusmagambet Awarded Presidential Fellowship
Botagoz Tusmagambet has been awarded the 2024-25 Presidential Fellowship for the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, recognizing her exceptional potential as a researcher. As a Ph.D. student in applied linguistics and second language acquisition, her work focuses on the social uses and development of literacies in diverse languages. Her dedication to advancing minority language research, particularly in her native Kazakhstan, underscores her commitment to enhancing multilingual competencies essential for social and economic progress.
Tusmagambet’s dissertation will investigate the impact of morphological awareness in Kazakh, Russian and English on vocabulary knowledge and word meaning inferencing in English. Her research aims to illuminate intra- and inter-lingual relationships crucial for successful literacy acquisition, with significant implications for multilingual education in complex geopolitical contexts in Central Asia and beyond.
In addition to her research, Tusmagambet brings extensive teaching experience in English, Russian and Korean. Her academic journey includes an undergraduate degree in English philology from Kazakh Ablai Khan University of International Relations and World Languages in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and a master’s degree in English education from Seoul National University in South Korea. Her multifaceted expertise highlights her dedication to fostering linguistic diversity and education.