From Student to Teacher-Always a Passion for Learning
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From Student to Teacher-Always a Passion for Learning
By Krissy Mailman ' 04
For Greg Scontras ' 04 one of the most enduring memories he has of Thornton Academy is sitting in English class at Thornton Academy and being inspired by Mr. Queally’ s love of learning. That inspiration never left him, and now in some ways, he tries to do the same as an assistant professor of linguistics.
“ Mr. Queally taught us that you can actively be doing something just by learning,” he said.
Looking back, it’ s safe to say that Greg has been active for more than 20 years in his quest for knowledge as a student of his craft: published author, sought after researcher, presenter, and most recently, as an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of California, Irvine.
“ Greg was single handedly one of the best students I’ ve ever taught,” said Christopher Queally, who taught Greg’ s Advanced Placement English course.“ He was always eager to learn. He absorbed everything like a sponge and hung on every word I said.”
In fact, words are Greg’ s passion and livelihood. As an assistant professor, Greg teaches as well as conducts research for the Department of Linguistics. Linguistics, in its simplest form, is the scientific study of language. Greg’ s focus is on how we use language to compose and communicate meaning, what our abstract linguistic representations are, and the compositional mechanism that manipulates them. His work investigates these representations as a means to further understand language and the psychological systems that shape it.
“ I study how our brain uses language. We cannot open people’ s skulls and see their minds. We have to interpret what they mean through language,” Greg said.“ If you can understand someone’ s language, you can better understand that person. If you can make a model of language, you can understand it better.”
Greg’ s interest in language started in the foreign language department at Thornton Academy. Greg studied four years of Spanish, two years of Greek, and two years of Russian. He also took many other courses in the humanities.
“ The number of foreign language courses that TA offered was really helpful. I’ m a big fan of a liberal arts education. There is no better time to attain that than in high school. A well-rounded education makes for good citizens. You can also learn more about yourself and what your goals are,” he said.
Greg’ s goals became clear when he started his undergraduate education at Boston University in 2004.“ There were more than 20,000 students at BU. The student body population was larger than the city of Saco, where I grew up,” Greg said.“ As a freshman you had to declare a major right away. I was a little hesitant at first, but once I started taking courses in linguistics, I fell in love. I knew early on I wanted to do research and eventually teach in the field of linguistics.”
In 2008, Greg graduated with distinction, from Boston University with a B. A. in both linguistics and philosophy. He knew he had to pursue a doctoral degree in order to teach, and he applied to Harvard. Within months, he was accepted into the Ph. D. Program in the Department of Linguistics.
“ I feel very fortunate to have been accepted into Harvard’ s program. Boston was very appealing to me as you have so many universities close