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Chia-Hui
Huang. Photo by Kathy Sauber. |
In October 2004, a generous
check arrived at the Department
of Linguistics, along with the following explanatory note:
“A few years ago I made the decision that I would donate
my entire first paycheck to the department after I left the UW.
It’s not much. It’s not nearly enough to pay back what
this department has given me. I hope with this small token of my
appreciation the department can continue to help students, as it
has helped me.”
The note—and donation—were from Chia-Hui Huang, who
earned her PhD from the department in 2003.
What inspired Huang, now a visiting assistant professor of linguistics
at the University of Pittsburgh, to make such a gesture?
“I realized how lucky I was to have professors who were so
enthusiastic about their work,” she explains. “That
kind of enthusiasm is contagious and it serves as a great source
of inspiration for graduate students. I felt the best thing I could
do to support the Linguistics Department was to donate some money.
After all, it is because of the training I received from this department
that I was able to find a job.”
Like her mentors, Huang is passionate about linguistics. When she
took her first linguistics course as an undergraduate, she found
“it was so hard and so challenging that I decided to take
more classes,” she recalls. She had found her field.
Later, as a graduate student at the UW, Huang found her calling:
teaching. She served as Lead Teaching Assistant (TA) for the department
and earned the University’s Excellence
in Teaching Award—the top teaching honor for graduate
students—in 2002.
“In a group of TAs who were outstanding instructors, Chia-Hui
distinguished herself both by her knowledge of the subject matter
and her amazing facility in the classroom,” recalls Julia
Herschensohn, Linguistics Department chair. “She did not rest
on her laurels, but continued to seek ways to improve her teaching.”
Huang even turns the teaching award into an opportunity to praise
the department. “The two reasons I received the teaching award
were that I learned from the best,” she says, “and I
had a great group of students who worked very hard and were very
tolerant of my experimenting with different techniques.”
Since making her unusual donation, Huang has been surprised by the
response to the gift. “I felt that it was nothing,”
she says. “I’m a little bit embarrassed by the
attention it has received.” And she insists that giving up
a paycheck has not put her in the poorhouse.
“My friends were worried about me giving up my first paycheck,
suggesting that maybe I’m starving myself,” she admits
with a laugh. “But I’m not. I’ve planned for this,
and I’ve been putting money away.”
After all, a promise
is a promise.
[Winter-Spring 2005 - Table of Contents]
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