Planning Workshop for a Computational Linguistics Olympiad

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

Linguistics is not included in high school curricula. Nevertheless, it is a rich area for careers in academia, education, government, national security, and information technology. It is also important as as cognitive, social, and behavioral science. Computational Linguistics combines linguistic analysis with mathemetical and algorithmic considerations. As a sub-area of Human Language Technologies, it is one of the scientific bases of information technologies involving speech, information retrieval, and universal access. In this project, more than 30 faculty and graduate students in Computational Linguistcs are collaborating to plan a Computational Linguistics Olympiad (CLO) contest targeted at high school students. The CLO as we envision it will include linguistic analysis as well as algorithmic thinking in order to attract students who might pursue careers in Human Language Technologies. An ideal contest would identify talent independent of training. Therefore, skills like computer programming, which are not evenly distributed across gender and social class, should not be required. The intended outcome of the CLO is to identify talented students so that they can be advised to get the higher education they need in order to work in the field of Human Language Technologies, with the ultimate goal of increasing the size and diversity of the pool of future researchers in Human Language Technologies.