2015 Ferguson Award – Thom G. Huebner, PhD

2015 Recipient of the Charles A. Ferguson Award for Outstanding Scholarship: Dr. Thom G. Huebner

Dr. Thom Huebner received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin, his M.A. at the University of Pittsburgh, and his Ph.D. from the University of Hawai’i. He joined the faculty of the San Jose State University College of Education in 1989 and in 1992 became a founding member of the Department of Linguistics and Language Development in the College of Humanities and the Arts. He chaired that department from 2000 to 2006, when he was appointed to the position of Associate Dean of the College.

Huebner has published numerous books and over 40 articles in the areas of sociolinguistics, language policy, second language acquisition, and foreign language education. In 1991, Dr. Huebner co-edited Crosscurrents in Second Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theories with Charles A. Ferguson. He served as editor for Charles A. Ferguson’s book: Socio-Linguistic Perspectives: Papers on Language in Society 1959-1994.

He has held academic positions at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University and has been visiting professor at Thammasat and Chulalongkorn Universities in Bangkok and at the Royal University of Fine Arts and the Royal University of Phnom Penh in Cambodia. He has also been senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (Nijmegen) and the National Foreign Language Center (Johns Hopkins University), a Fulbright Scholar (Japan), a Senior Language Specialist for the U.S. Department of State, and a Peace Corps volunteer (Buriram, Thailand).

Reception and Presentation of the Charles A. Ferguson Award

Left to right: Guadalupe Valdés (CAL Board Vice Chair), Donna Christian (past CAL President), Thom G. Huebner (2015 Ferguson Award Recipient), Terrence Wiley (current CAL President), G. Richard Tucker (past CAL president), Jodi Crandall (CAL Board Chair), and Bernard Spolsky (past Ferguson Fellow).