Second Language Acquisition and Teaching

Welcome to the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) at the University of Arizona!  SLAT is home to some of the most innovative and creative work around teaching multiple languages to multiple types of students in multiple contexts.  We hope you will find resources throughout this site to explore opportunities to apply to study with us or to start a collaborative research partnership or engagement initiative with us.

Being an interdisciplinary program at the University of Arizona means that our work reaches across traditional boundaries of all types and that organizationally, we are associated with five colleges at the UA.  Our faculty are more than 90 in number and bring expertise from more than 19 academic departments, many of which are nationally ranked.  Across our cohorts, our students hail from all over the world and the U.S. Admission to our program is highly competitive as we work to maintain small class sizes and a strong advisory support system with each student having two faculty mentors and a faculty advisor. 

The SLAT Ph.D. program is designed to provide rigorous advanced training for researchers, teacher-researchers, and administrators whose interests lie in second language acquisition and applied linguistics. Our students choose from a range of majors in Instructional, Linguistic, Cognitive, and Sociocultural Dimensions and a minor in these areas or in Language Program Administration or Technology and Second Language Teaching.  We offer graduate certificate programs as well.  Additionally, our students have access to numerous professional development resources, research lectures, and a network of alumni.  Our program diversity allows students to create a meaningful, individual pathway to their chosen future careers. 

Our students graduate with the expertise that will allow them to make invaluable contributions to students and research in Applied Linguistics.   Since our start in 1990, the SLAT program has graduated almost 600 students who have gone on to become leaders in their discipline, regionally, nationally, and internationally. Graduates regularly place into tenure-track academic careers and teaching positions as well as into innovative careers in non-profit development work, governmental positions, publishing work, and even corporate cutting-edge educational technological careers. 

I invite you to explore this website.  For a quick reference, you may download our SLAT PhD Program brochure. I encourage you to reach out to us by emailing your questions and ideas to SLAT’s program coordinators, Dr. Kelley Merriam-Castro and Debbie Shon or to me.

Suzanne Panferov Reese, Ph.D.

Chair, Second Language Acquisition and Teaching
Associate Specialist Professor, Public and Applied Humanities