Notable Alumni | Jim Michnowicz Breaking Cultural Barriers Through Hispanic Linguistics

Editor’s Note: The College of Arts & Sciences Notable Alumni Awards honor alumni for broad career accomplishments, commitment to community service, and valuable contributions to Ohio University and the College of Arts & Sciences.

Dr. Jim Michnowicz ’96, ’98 M.A. in Spanish

Dr. Jim Michnowicz is Professor of Hispanic linguistics at North Carolina State University. He received his Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics at Penn State University in 2006, with a focus on language contact, variation and sociolinguistics. He has been on faculty at NC State since 2006, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Hispanic linguistics.

In 2018, he received the NC State College of Humanities & Social Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award, and was inducted into the Academy of Outstanding Teachers at NC State in 2019.

Michnowicz earned a BSED in Spanish in 1996 at Ohio University, followed by an M.A. in Spanish from the College of Arts & Sciences in 1998.

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His research focuses on language contact with Spanish, both in Yucatan, Mexico and in North Carolina, and his publications examine a range of phonetic and morphosyntactic features in order to better understand the linguistic outcomes of different contexts of language and dialect contact.

Other research interests include language shift and maintenance, along with systems of address forms in the Spanish-speaking world.

As of fall 2019, he also serves as the Director of Graduate Programs in the Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures.