AAAL Announces Winner of the 2025 Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award: Linda Harklau

The purpose of the Distinguished Scholarship & Service Award is to recognize and honor a distinguished scholar for their scholarship and service to the profession in general and to the American Association for Applied Linguistics in particular. In making this award, AAAL recognizes that contributions to equity, diversity, inclusion, and access are integral to distinguished scholarship and service.

Linda Harklau (M.A. University of Minnesota; Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley) is a Professor of TESOL & World Language Education program and Affiliated Faculty in Linguistics at the University of Georgia (USA).   

Dr. Harklau’s career has been dedicated to advancing our understanding of language learning and academic achievement of multilingual learner immigrant youth in U.S. secondary schools, with the goal of improving high school graduation rates and fostering greater postsecondary enrollment. Her scholarship has focused in particular on the educational challenges and inequities encountered by youth and their families in new immigrant settlement areas of the southeastern U.S.   

Harklau’s current research investigates how “venture” philanthropy-sponsored reform initiatives in Georgia higher education that were intended to improve college completion rates have been used to eliminate academic supports for multilingual learner students state-wide. Harklau is the author of numerous articles, co-editor of three volumes on multilingual youth and college transitions, and author of Adolescent Second Language Learning and Multilingualism (Oxford University Press, 2022).   Harklau has served in multiple AAAL leadership roles, including Member-at-Large, Secretary-Treasurer, President (2018-2019), and most recently trustee for the Fund for the Future of Applied Linguistics (FFAL) (2022-2025).   

Congratulations, Dr. Harklau, on a well-deserved award!