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Dr. Theresa McGarry has spent years exploring the power of language — how it shapes identity, builds community and reflects human thought.
Now, the East Tennessee State University professor has earned a Fulbright U.S. Scholar award, one of the most respected honors in academia.

McGarry, who directs ETSU’s TESOL Certificate Program (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and teaches courses in English and linguistics, will travel to Sri Lanka to study Colloquial Sinhala. It’s the everyday spoken form of the language used by most of its speakers but often overlooked in formal linguistic study.

“This award is an incredible honor, but more importantly, it signals that our society values linguistic research and cross-cultural understanding,” said McGarry, who arrived at ETSU in 2004. “It’s deeply meaningful to engage with communities in ways that both support their languages and return value through scholarly collaboration.”

McGarry’s Fulbright project is a collaboration with the Rev. Dr. Kapugollawe Anandakiththi at Kelaniya University and will involve working with Sinhala speakers and local consultants to examine the language’s conditional structures — a key to understanding how people construct hypothetical worlds through language. Through her research, McGarry hopes to promote what linguists dub “valorization,” helping communities see the richness and value of their everyday speech.

“Dr. McGarry’s Fulbright award reflects the depth of scholarship and global engagement that define our faculty,” said ETSU President Dr. Brian Noland. “Her work honors the university’s mission to foster understanding across cultures while advancing research that has both local and international impact.”

Her project builds on decades of international experience teaching English as a second language and a scholarly focus on less commonly studied languages. McGarry has co-authored a multimedia curriculum for learning Colloquial Sinhala and helped produce a translation of literary Sinhala texts.

“Over the years, I’ve seen a real shift in public attitudes toward nonstandard dialects and regional varieties,” she said. “It’s incredibly rewarding to be part of that cultural change.”

With more than 400,000 alumni since its inception in 1946, the Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international academic exchange, supporting groundbreaking work in more than 160 countries. McGarry joined ETSU’s Stokes Piercy, named a 2025-26 Fulbright recipient only a few weeks ago.

Since the Fulbright Program’s inception, only 27 ETSU faculty have earned the prestigious award — and Dr. Theresa McGarry is the first linguist in university history to do so. She is also just the second Fulbright Scholar from Tennessee to be placed in Sri Lanka, and the first since 1990, according to Dr. Carson Medley, director of the university’s Office of Prestigious Awards.

“Dr. McGarry’s Fulbright has really helped bring a new kind of language culture to campus,” said Medley. “Her work with everyday Sinhala creates a unique cultural bridge to the Appalachian speech community here in Johnson City and puts ETSU on the map as one of the few places in North America doing in-depth research on Sinhala.”