Katherine Ward , Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Spanish

Katherine Ward is an Assistant Professor of Hispanic Linguistics in the Department of Classical & Modern Languages & Literatures at Texas Tech University. Before joining TTU, she received her PhD in Spanish Linguistics in 2025 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with a PhD minor in Curriculum & Instruction from UW–Madison's School of Education. Her research centers on perceptions of bilingualism and minoritized language contact features in school settings—principally, Spanish-English bilingual education in the U.S. and Kichwa-Spanish Intercultural Bilingual Education in Ecuador, where she lived and worked for many years and carried out her dissertation research as a Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellow. Her work explores perceptions of linguistic contact phenomena by teachers, students, and communities as case studies in combatting linguistic discrimination in schools worldwide.

Recent courses:

Graduate

• SPAN 5343 Studies in Spanish (Second Language Acquisition) - Fall 2026
• SPAN 5340 Spanish Language and Linguistics (Introduction to Hispanic Linguistics) - Fall 2025

Undergraduate

• SPAN 3308 How the Spanish Language Works - Fall 2026; Spring 2026
• SPAN 3318 The Sounds of Spanish - Spring 2026

External Links

ORCID