Michal Temkin Martinez, Ph.D.

An educator. I have been teaching at the college level since Fall 2001, and I find this to be my calling. I feel extremely fortunate to get to interact with students in and out of the classroom, and I find seeing them grow intellectually and emotionally to be extremely satisfying.

A linguist. I studied linguistics at California State University, Northridge and the University of Southern California. My training is in experimental phonology, but I also work in language documentation, working with community members who arrived in the United States as resettled refugees. My current research and administrative work focus on capacity building for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in the field of linguistics. I also teach linguistics at Boise State University and am the Chair of the Department of Linguistics.

An immigrant. I moved to the United States from Israel with my family when I was 11 years old. This is the reason I have a first name that’s hard to pronounce.

A cat lady. My husband and I have had five wonderful furry feline companions. All five have lived with us in the residence halls on campus, and most of them love hanging out with students (and humans in general) and enjoyed serving as Pets in Residents (PIRs, pronounced ‘purrs’) when we lived on campus for 8 years.

An amateur photographer. I enjoy taking photos and sharing them with others. I have taken a few classes, and won a couple of small local competitions.

Download my CV . For downloadable publications, click HERE.

Professor of Linguistics

This year marks my 17th year as a linguistics faculty member at Boise State University. My areas of specialty in linguistics are phonetics, phonology, psycholinguistics, and language documentation. I also actively engage in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). In addition to classroom teaching, I am the founding director of the Mary Ellen Ryder Linguistics Lab, and the inaugural chair of the Department of Linguistics.

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• I will be participating in two panels at the Georgetown University Roundtable (GURT) in March 2026 — one about scaffolding undergraduate research experiences for all students, and the other about ways of supporting and advocating for support for students’ wayfinding for post-graduation plans.
• I co-presented a talk about student engagement in evaluating learning outcome assessments with my colleague Aiden VanderStouwe at the 13th Student Learning Outcome Symposium in January 2026.
• I co-presented a talk titled “Valuing SoTL: Institutional Recognition of SoTL in North American University Policies” at the Annual Conference of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) with S. Raj Chaudhury, Nicole Brun-Mercer, and our undergraduate collaborator Toby Ward in November 2025 in Christchurch, New Zealand.
• I was an invited panelist discussing “Empowering Displaced Communities through Language and Culture” at the Global and Area Perspectives Symposium at Indiana University in November 2024.
• I co-presented a talk titled “SoTL Collaboration is Vital for Justice” at the Annual Conference of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) with Catherine Anderson and Kazuko Hiramatsu in October 2024 in French Lick, IN.
• I organized and hosted Igniting Scholarship in teaching: A Workshop for Humanities and Social Science Faculty at Boise State. The workshop was sponsored by a grant from the Humanities and Social Science Initiative (HSSI) in Summer 2024.
• This is my seventh year co-facilitating (with the awesome Dr. Kazuko Hiramatsu) a Faculty Learning Community on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Linguistics — we received an initial 1-year grant from the National Science Foundation to do this amazing work, and then got two more grants:
  • One for a conference for summer 2023
  • Another one for a workshop for summer 2024
• I moderated a special session on Teaching Linguistics: A Glimpse into the Future at the 2024 annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in January.
• Selda Delsooz (undergraduate student in Business Management) and I delivered the closing plenary at the International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation on March 5th, 2023.
• I co-taught a mini-course at the 2023 annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America on Thriving as an Early Career Faculty Member with Dr. Christina Bjorndahl, Dr. Ann Bunger, Dr. Jessi Grieser, Dr. Iara Mantenuto, and Dr. Miranda McCarvel.
• In November 2022, I began volunteering at the Peregrine Fund’s World Center for Birds of Prey. I have served as both docent in the Interpretive center and am now on the Raptor Care team. As me about birds!

c/o Department of Linguistics
1910 University Dr.
Boise, ID, 83725-1527
USA

michaltmartinez at boisestate dot edu

(208)426-2718

Follow me on social media:

Facebook: Michal Temkin Martinez
Instagram: @michaltmartinez

I picked up photography as a hobby a few years ago, and I really enjoy taking and developing photos. I’ll try to share my photos here whenever I have new ones…

Flower Photography

In summer of 2020, I enrolled in an online course on the Art of Flower Photography, taught by Emma Davies. I have really enjoyed taking photos of flowers since then, and I have curated a series of 10 recent images featuring flowers grown by flower farmers in Idaho.

Street Photography in New York City

I was super fortunate to get to attend a 2-day street photography workshop led by Valérie Jardin. Here are some of my favorite shots from my time there.

Birds of Prey

Boise is home to the Peregrine Fund‘s World Center for Birds of Prey, and in the Fall, they host Fall Flight shows to educate the public about the Peregrine Fund’s work and the birds themselves. I recently began volunteering at the WCBOP, but I’ve attended their amazing Fall Flights for several years. Here are a few of my favorite shots from the shows I’ve been to over the past few years:

My entries at the Western Idaho Fair

I entered a few of my photos at the Western Idaho Fair in 2019 and 2023. Captions indicate the category the photo was entered under. Asterisks (* or ***) indicate first or third place prize in category.

First Trip to the Oregon Coast