The SIL-UND faculty consists of active scholars who spend most of the year engaged in linguistic research and service to language communities in many countries around the world. Some return to Grand Forks every summer to teach, others rotate in on a more occasional basis.

Regular graduate faculty

The core of SIL's faculty are also adjunct members of the University's graduate faculty, and as such are available to supervise graduate students in UND's M.A. in linguistics. The following graduate faculty members teach at least once in every five years during the summers on the UND campus.

• J. Albert Bickford (Ph.D. 1987 University of California San Diego): morphology, syntax, signed languages, indigenous languages of Mexico, computer-assisted linguistic analysis, annotation of interlinear text materials. Courses: syntax, morphology, field methods, signed languages.
• John M. Clifton (Ph.D. 1980 Indiana University): phonology, orthography, languages of Papua New Guinea, sociolinguistics, bilingualism and language patterns in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Courses: phonology, language survey.
• Thomas Headland (Ph.D. 1986 University of Hawaii): Tropical forest human ecology; Hunter-gatherer societies; Philippine Negritos, swidden cultivation systems; Austronesian linguistics; Insular Southeast Asia. Courses: Ethnographic methods.
• Mark E. Karan (Ph.D. 1996 University of Pennsylvania): sociolinguistics, language shift, phonology. Courses: sociolinguistics, phonology.
• Stephen H. Levinsohn (Ph.D. 1980 University of Reading, Great Britain): narrative and hortatory discourse, Koine Greek, Central African, West African and Quechuan language families. Courses: typology and analysis of narrative and hortatory discourse.
• Steve Parker (Ph.D. 2002 University of Massachusetts Amherst): phonology, phonetics, optimality theory, Amazonian languages. Courses: phonology.
• Keith Snider (Ph.D. 1990 University of Leiden): tone, phonology, historical and comparative linguistics, African linguistics. Courses: tone, phonology.
• David J. Weber (Ph.D. 1983 University of California Los Angeles): morphology, syntax, typology, historical linguistics, computational morphology, literacy, orthography, Quechua, Witotoan. Courses: syntax, typology and discourse, semantics, translation, field methods, historical linguistics, orthography development.
• Diana D. Weber (Ph. D. Reading Education, 2003, University of Syracuse): reading education, teacher education, Quechua. Courses: reading education.

Other graduate faculty

Other graduate faculty members teach SIL classes less regularly, but are available to serve on M.A. thesis committees and supervise independent studies.

• Joan Baart (Ph.D. 1987 University of Leiden): descriptive linguistics, prosody, acoustic phonetics, languages of Pakistan
• Cheryl A. Black (Ph.D. 1994 University of California Santa Cruz): formal syntax, government and binding theory, analysis of tone, computational linguistics, Otomanguean languages, Zapotec, Bantu. Courses: tone, government-and-binding syntax, computational linguistics.
• H. Andrew Black (Ph.D. 1993 University of California Santa Cruz): computational linguistics, machine translation, generative phonology, Mixtec tone. Courses: computational linguistics.
• Stephen A. Marlett (Ph.D. 1981 University of California San Diego): theoretical linguistics, phonology, syntax, Otomanguean languages, Seri, Koiné Greek. Courses: phonology, field methods, syntax, Koiné Greek syntax.
• James W. Meyer (D.A. 1987 Illinois State University): rhetoric, English syntax, Bantu languages, Swahili, discourse in composition studies, language pedagogy. Courses: syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics, translation, sociolinguistics.
• Ken Olson (Ph.D. 2001 University of Chicago): phonological theory, acoustic and articulatory phonetics, historical linguistics, Mono (D.R. Congo). Courses: phonology.
• James S. Roberts (Ph.D. 1980 Georgetown University): phonology, syntax, Chadic languages, French. Courses: phonology, sociolinguistics.
• David H. Tuggy (Ph.D. 1981 University of California San Diego): semantics, cognitive grammar, speech errors, Nahuatl, Spanish. Courses: semantics, phonology.

Linguists in the department of English

Two linguists in UND's department of English Language and Literature also participate in the linguistics M.A. program. Some of the classes that they teach through that department during the fall and spring semesters have linguistics content and can be used as part of the linguistics major. They also serve on thesis committees.

• Xiaozhao Huang (Ph.D. 1994 Ball State University): English linguistics, TESL, Sociolinguistics, African-American English.
• David Marshall (Ph.D. 1975 New York University): sociolinguistics, language planning, syntax theory, Old and Middle English, English as an international language.

Other faculty

In addition to the graduate faculty, the SIL summer program is enriched by the presence of other scholars who teach courses or provide a series of special lectures. In recent years these have included the following:

• Ruth Mary Alexander (M.A. 1968 University of California Los Angeles): articulatory phonetics, lexicography, Mixtec. Courses: articulatory phonetics.
• Anita C. Bickford (M.A. 1989 University of North Dakota, M.F.A. 1978 University of Minnesota): articulatory phonetics, second language acquisition. Courses: articulatory phonetics, second language acquisition, syntax and morphology.
• Daniel L. Everett (Ph.D. 1983 Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil): syntax, phonology, morphology, Amazonian languages. Courses: phonology, syntax.
• Keith Slater (Ph.D. 1998 UC Santa Barbara): descriptive linguistics; Mangghuer (Minhe Monguor); historical linguistics, language contact, sociolinguistic motivations for language change; Mongolic and Altaic comparative studies; discourse; clause chaining. Courses: syntax, morphology, articulatory phonetics, field methods.
• Greg Thomson (Ph.D. 2000 University of Alberta): psycholinguistics, second language acquisition. Courses: second language acquisition, field methods.
• Stephen L. Walter (Ph.D. 1980 University of Texas at Arlington): literacy, multilingual education. Courses: literacy, multilingual education.