Bio
Chris “the Schwa” Litten is a PhD student in Applied Linguistics and Technology at Iowa State University. He holds a B.S. in Television-Radio from Ithaca College and an M.S.Ed. in TESOL from Temple University Japan. Before doctoral study, he worked in media and taught English at universities in Japan, developing enough flow to get sea sickness.
At Iowa State, Chris works with the Online Learning Team and as a graduate speech consultant. He hold the mic and your attention like two swords while helping students prepare for oral English certification, conference presentations, job talks, defenses, and the Three Minute Thesis competition.
Chris studies spoken fluency, pronunciation, and how pauses, hesitations, repairs, and other disfluencies shape speech perception. Sometimes he rhyme quick, sometimes he rhyme slow; Chris studies everything that happens in between. He is a real G who moves in silence like lasagna.
His work also examines how artificial intelligence and automatic speech recognition process spontaneous language. His thesis will smash a stereo to pieces, as well as a few assumptions about human speech and AI.
An active researcher and conference presenter, his reign on the top will not be short like leprechauns. He received the Quentin G. Johnson Award and a Teacher of Excellence Award in spring 2026. While not a farmer, he remains outstanding in his field.
He wonders how many lyrics he can fit into his bio before he is asked to be more professional. Truly rare, like affordable health care.