12.11.2008

Remembering Elliot Judd

I found out today that Elliot Judd passed away. He was a linguistics professor at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and even though I never took a class with him, I did talk to him sometimes, and he was one of the few nice people in that department. He was helpful and was really passionate about language, teaching, and English acquisition, and even though he had a good job and was intelligent, he wasn't arrogant, and seemed to be truly interested in people.

Here is his bio from his university page:

Elliot Judd's major area of research is in language policy, especially in the United States. More specifically, he is interested in the socio-political factors that have shaped American language policy, both past and present, in the areas of teaching English to immigrants, teaching foreign language to native-born Americans, dialect usage, and policies that promote the maintenance or loss of languages other than Engllish, including programs dealing with bilingual education. He has also studied language policies and practices for English teaching in other countries around the world. Another area that he has written on is TESOL methodology, and curriculum and materials development for both adults and children. He has helped design materials and teacher-training programs for use in adult, community-based education programs, content-based mathematics for ESL elementary students, and in academic programs for adult ESL/EFL learners. Judd served as President of the International TESOL Association from 2006-07.
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6 comments:

  1. Emily9:38 PM

    Thank you so much for writing about him. I couldn't stop thinking about his family when I was at work, but it was a beautiful service.

    I will see you at work on Saturday.

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  2. Margaret Larkin7:00 PM

    Thanks for letting me know--though I noticed that they put announcements about it in our boxes.

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  3. Tommy8:18 PM

    Thank you so much for writing about this. For some reason, I had this feeling to go to the UIC Linguistics page today and I thought it was strange that he was no longer listed, not even mentioned, on their homepage. I was an ESL Grad. Student for a month but dropped out because I coulden't stand graduate school, nor the department, expect him. Every class he held was inspirational - I even kept all the books even though I'll probably never teach ESL. Anyway, Professor Judd was a fantastic, brilliant, sweet man, and I knew he had cancer but I did not know it was that far advance when I met him in 2007. He also died 10 days after my mom..life is so strange. Anyway, a million thank-yous for the information!!

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  4. Margaret Larkin11:34 PM

    You're welcome. I wasn't in that department but I met enough profs from there to discover that he was the nicest one and helpful too.

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  5. Cotasmom9:04 PM

    9/15/2010 -- I just found out the Elliot passed away -- over 2 years ago! I did study with him and he was the driving force in my finishing my degree and in my ESOL teaching career. He saw something in my and was always encouraging and pushed me to be better. I believe it was his recommendation that helped me get the Fulbright I did in the mid-90s, after I taught for about 8 years.

    I am very sad to hear about this. I got an email from UIC and read about the Lx dept. being combined with a bunch of others, and went to the Lx page -- only three faculty listed and not Elliot, so I googled his name.

    What a huge loss to the world of Linguistics.

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  6. Margaret Larkin12:01 PM

    Wow, you got a Fulbright? That's great. There are few professors like him.

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