The Linguistics Research Apprenticeship Practicum (LRAP) at UC Berkeley is helping reshape undergraduate research in the field of linguistics.
Designed to expand access to hands-on research and provide mentorship training for graduate students, LRAP pairs undergraduate students with graduate student mentors working on active research projects. Through this collaboration, students gain both technical skills and academic confidence while contributing to original linguistic research.
The program was initially developed in 2013 by a team of graduate students, faculty and staff in the Berkeley Linguistics program. Several current and former Berkeley affiliates who have been involved in LRAP in different ways over the years are collaborating to write up a paper on the goals and benefits of the LRAP program; this includes Berkeley Linguistics Professors Hannah Sande and Line Mikkelsen, Berkeley Ph.D. student Katherine Russell, and linguistics alumni Myriam Lapierre and Emily Clem.
"Undergraduate research opportunities in linguistics departments are often limited," Linguistics Professor Hannah Sande said. "There are many barriers to undergraduates getting involved in research, including a lack of awareness of opportunities and norms and unconscious bias in the selection of research assistants."
How LRAP Works
LRAP runs each semester and begins with a selection process: graduate students submit short descriptions of their ongoing research projects, and undergraduates review these postings and rank their preferences. Once paired, apprentices contribute to the project over the course of the semester — often learning transcription, software tools like ELAN and Praat, data annotation, and even web development. The experience is structured to be accessible even for students without prior research experience.
For example, one recent practicum involved creating a public-facing website for the Atchan Song and Story Corpus, an audiovisual collection of oral traditions from an endangered language spoken in Côte d'Ivoire. Students helped transcribe and annotate audio and video content, translating between Atchan, French and English, using tools like Praat and ELAN. These annotations included phonetic transcriptions, glosses and translations, which were then integrated into the corpus website developed by apprentices through LRAP.
Since LRAP's launch over 12 years ago, 439 undergraduate apprentices and 73 graduate mentors have participated across 24 semesters — averaging nearly 30 students per semester. By comparison, linguistics-related URAP projects averaged just four undergraduate participants per semester in the 24 semesters before LRAP's founding. Since then, URAP participation has also grown, with an average of over eight undergraduates per semester — a shift Professor Sande attributes to the "culture of research and collaboration" fostered by LRAP.
Training Mentors and Shaping Research
One of LRAP's key innovations is its mentorship model. "Some undergraduate students may be intimidated to approach faculty for research opportunities, but LRAP pairs them with graduate students, who may be more approachable and have more in common with the undergraduates," said Sande. "We have found that this is a nice entry point into hands-on research for lots of students, especially those who do not come from academic backgrounds."
Sande herself was a graduate mentor in LRAP and described the experience as formative: "I gained mentorship experience that has influenced my mentoring style to this day. We are truly building the next generation of linguistic researchers."
Linguistics Professor Line Mikkelsen, who has helped to oversee LRAP over the years, described the program as "a win-win for everyone and for science." Linguistics Ph.D. student Katherine Russell agreed. As a former undergraduate apprentice and now graduate mentor, she has mentored over 40 undergraduate research apprentices through her own research on the endangered language Atchan.
"Through LRAP, I've trained apprentices to annotate and analyze audio and video recordings, and helped build the Atchan Song and Story Corpus," said Russell. "This project would not have been possible to do on my own, but through collaboration, it's now a reality."
Russell also emphasized how LRAP lowers barriers to research and supports genuine mentoring relationships. "There are so many obstacles for undergraduates getting involved in research, especially for students who come from diverse backgrounds. LRAP breaks down those barriers, as it allows apprentices to gain hands-on research experience in a relatively low-stakes environment and fosters mentoring relationships between graduate and undergraduate students," she said.
She added that the program enhances classroom learning by providing students with meaningful research experiences. Through LRAP, undergraduates put the theoretical concepts from their linguistics courses into practice by working directly with original data. In her view, this hands-on approach highlights the value of undergraduate research — deepening students' classroom learning through practical, real-world application.
In addition to skill-building, LRAP offers graduate students practical experience in mentorship — often through campus programs like the GSI (graduate student instructor) Teaching & Resource Center, which is an experience not typically built into doctoral training.
Scalable Model
According to Professor Sande, LRAP's model has proven adaptable across a wide range of institutions. "The LRAP model has now been implemented in linguistics departments at several different institutions, all of different sizes — some private and some public, some with Master's programs in addition to undergraduate and Ph.D. programs," she said.
Former UC Berkeley graduate student mentors Myriam Lapierre and Emily Clem have each adapted the LRAP model at their current institutions. Lapierre is now a faculty member at the University of Washington (and will be joining McGill University in Spring 2026), and Clem is a faculty member in linguistics at UC San Diego. Drawing on their experiences with LRAP at Berkeley, both have launched similar research apprenticeship programs in their departments.
This versatility makes LRAP a scalable framework for departments seeking to expand undergraduate research opportunities, regardless of institutional size or structure. Whether at a small liberal arts college or a large research university, the model can be tailored to fit varying levels of faculty capacity and student interest.
Sande and her co-authors Clem, Lapierre, Mikkelsen and Russell presented an overview of the LRAP program and its outcomes at the Linguistic Society of America's Annual Meeting in January 2026, and a paper on the topic is currently under review.
"We hope our paper, which outlines the benefits of LRAP with quantitative and qualitative results, and provides a guide for getting started, will help convince other departments, within and outside of linguistics, that this is a worthwhile initiative," said Sande.
