AATT lost its honorary president and its founder Erika Gilson on March 25th, 2024
She was the founding member and a great supporter of the organization. We are grateful to her for everything she did for AATT. The field of the LCTLs will greatly miss her.
Erika Gilson earned her Ph.D. in Historical Linguistics in 1981 from the University of Pennsylvania. She taught Turkish and Ottoman languages at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, followed by more than 25 years at Princeton University where she was a beloved and respected faculty member. She worked on so many projects, developed materials, and organized conferences for the Turkic languages field.
She was also a founding member of the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL) and an active contributor to the Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO). She guided countless educational expeditions to Turkey, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia for university students during the summer months for over 15 years. Erika Gilson was a delegate and longstanding supporter of American Research Institute in Turkey in Turkish language studies field and a member of the Turkish American Friendship Society of the US. She worked for US State Department's Critical Language Scholarship for Turkish and Azerbaijani, was Project Director for ARIT-BoÄŸaziçi Summer Fellowships for Advanced Turkish, and was instrumental in developing ACTFL Guidelines for Modern Turkish"
Orbituary for Erika Hale Gilson
https://www.healeyfuneralhomes.com/obituary/erika-gilson
Festschrift for Erika Gilson