One can find a moment in The Penn State Department of Applied Linguistics that is simple to miss: it is neither a lecture nor a publication, but this quieter task of assisting a person in discovering their voice in a new language, in a new field of study, and in a new academic culture. For Dr. Meredith Doran, who was recently promoted to full Teaching Professor, that moment is not incidental; it is central to the work.
Discussing her career, Dr. Doran reflects on a trajectory that has included multiple roles across Penn State University, following a path that in a number of ways has resembled the development of the department itself. Hired while finishing her PhD, she joined Penn State at a time when Applied Linguistics was still a program, then known as Linguistics and Applied Language Studies (LALS), before becoming the department it is today. In a way, she notes, “I’ve been in the department since its inception.” However, to call her path institutional continuity would be to omit something of more significance: her work has always reflected the notion that language isn’t something to be learned as an object. Rather, she sees language as a social, intellectual, and professional practice that links us to knowledge, to creative expression, to critical thinking, and to each other.
The evidence of her longstanding relationship to envisioning and teaching language as a key connector can be seen in her new status as a full Teaching Professor, which she describes as “a kind of handshake,” an institutional recognition of the variety of roles she has assumed throughout her career. Importantly, she does not frame this new professional title as an achievement. Instead, she views it as a recognition of the integration of her years of teaching, advising, mentorship, program creation, and university service, aligned with her mission as a language and intercultural educator.
Language as a Social Practice
Dr. Doran’s intellectual commitments draw on multiple foundations, including sociolinguistics, second language pedagogy, language ideological studies, and Vygotskyan Sociocultural Theory: language is not an abstract system, but a profoundly human, situated, and dynamic practice. It is both a key means of establishing relationships and a tool for building new ones, whether across people, cultures, belief systems, or concepts. This view of language threads its way through her teaching and scholarship, whether she is addressing the needs of second language users seeking to communicate in new or expanded ways, researching the patterns of Language for Specific Purposes for teaching and learning purposes, or providing pedagogical support to faculty in Taiwan who teach complex disciplinary content through English-Medium Instruction. Rather than viewing language as a set of forms to be learned, she views it as a tool for engagement and exchange in communities, be they disciplinary, professional, cultural or interpersonal. Language, in her words, is not “up in the sky, but located in social relations and in knowing each other.” There are tangible implications of this concept of what language is: it redefines what and how we teach. It redefines how we envision the process of learning. And most importantly, it redefines the sense of how to support each other in deepening our belonging, through shared communication, in the specific educational and professional environments that we seek to be members of.
Building Infrastructures of Support
This social and situated view of language takes primacy of place in her work as director of EPPIC (English for Professional Purposes Intercultural Center), a program she founded with the goal of providing research-based communication support to multilingual students and scholars across disciplinary communities at Penn State. Indeed, as multiple modes of communication are at the center of learning and knowledge exchange, university students are not only learning in and through language (at Penn State, primarily through English), they are also engaging in the social practices of language to participate in and become active members of a chosen disciplinary community. This process includes becoming familiar with its characteristic discourse patterns, such as: how is a research presentation in electrical engineering typically structured and delivered? What are some effective strategies to prepare for a research meeting in plant biology? From this point of view, what EPPIC aims to provide to students is not remediation of their English skills, but instead guided support to identify and learn to use discipline-specific patterns of communication and thinking in their chosen fields of study. Doran talks of this work in virtually architectural terms, defining EPPIC as a space in which students can ask questions that they may not feel free to ask elsewhere: Does this draft of my paper sound academic enough? Is this the writing style that is expected for this kind of assignment? These questions go beyond technical ‘correctness’ to address issues of disciplinary knowledge and how it is built and communicated through language.
Teaching and Mentorship
Her teaching style is also organized around a core principle: orientation to students’ questions, needs and projects. She does not offer prescriptive academic advice, instead encouraging students to find their “burning questions” - the topics and issues they return to in their free time, when taking a walk or in the shower. This is a pragmatic stance on academic persistence and success. She says that pursuing graduate-level research is best supported by internal motivation and that students need to develop it by finding the questions that really captivate them. This is the foundation for sustained inquiry and meaningful contributions.
Dr. Doran affirms, when she is asked about her mentorship role that it occurs in multiple forms, including outside of departmental structures, such as in long-term, and sometimes informal interactions with students who visit EPPIC from a range of disciplines. This kind of support, she explains, can happen “over many months or even years,” with her serving as “a kind of sounding board” as students go through various phases of their academic life. In this sense, she plays a unique role in such interactions: she is not a specialist working within one department, but a transversal guide, a person who assists students across programs in navigating academic culture itself as they reach new stages and milestones. In this kind of dialogue, provided also by multiple members of the EPPIC team, she works with students to address topics such as communicating with one’s advisor, participating in class discussions, preparing research presentations, thesis writing, and even how to navigate moments of confusion, which is not failure but a very normal part of disciplinary learning and socialization.
Department culture to Scholarly practice
When asked about the Department of Applied Linguistics, Doran characterizes it as a complex web of activity that includes a variety of reading groups, research and teaching opportunities, round table presentations, and more - a “vibrant” ecosystem that is rich enough to sometimes be overwhelming in its opportunities for participation, particularly for new graduate students. Overall, she sees the network of departmental activities as a wellspring of connection across subfields, people, methodological perspectives, and ideas.
For Doran, this sense of nexus exists not only within the department as an institutional space, but also in her perception of the genesis of scholarship itself. For her, academic work is not a solitary activity but a fundamentally social process. This networked orientation can be seen in her advice to students and early-career scholars: be inquisitive, keep an open mind, and actively pursue opportunities for connection and collaboration. Instead of thinking of research as something to approach individually, she urges scholars to “imagine themselves as part of continuing conversations,” sites where listening, sharing, thinking together, and interacting with others are treated as focal points of intellectual development.
In Meredith Doran’s work, there is, perhaps, a throughline: Language is not only an object of study and continuous development. It is the central means by which individuals identify, explore, and define their thinking, their positions, and the freedom to speak or not. The focus of her career has been to make sure that more people can achieve that freedom, in terms that are most meaningful to them.
By Rose Asantewaa Ansah
(RA, Head of Department)