Congrats to NELC Alum Aaron Butts (PhD 2013), who was recently named Mellon Chair of Early Christian Studies
at The Catholic University of America. Prof. Butts defended his dissertation in our department only eight years ago, entitled
"Language Maintenance, Lexical Borrowing, and Grammatical Replication: The Case of Greek and Syriac," under the
mentorship of Prof. Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee. Prof. Butts, was hired as Assistant Professor of Semitic Languages
and Literatures at Catholic University of America and earned tenure in 2019 and has now achieved this distinction of the
Mellon Chair of Early Christian Studies. Congratulations Prof. Butts!