By Jonathan Riggs 

When Tom Bye graduated from UCLA with a Ph.D. in linguistics in 1976, he and now-husband David Bohne kept their celebration small — par for the course for the pair.

“When we met, we didn’t have much money, so we’d go out on Friday nights to a restaurant counter and order liver and onions — $1.29, including a small green salad and roll,” Bohne remembers with a smile. “Neither of us much liked it, but it was the cheapest thing on the menu. Then we’d get an inexpensive bottle of wine and talk for hours. We still haven’t run out of things to talk about.”

“Both of us are incredibly frugal,” Bye adds with a big laugh. “But it’s the reason we’re able to give it all away today.”

Among their generous gifts to support far-reaching initiatives, the couple has pledged $2 million to the UCLA Division of Humanities to establish the Thomas J. Bye Linguistics Laboratory Program. Augmented by $500,000 from the Humanities Division Centennial Matching Program (made possible by the Kaplan/Panzer Humanities Endowment), the lab program will support innovative, interdisciplinary research — particularly in child language acquisition, one of Bye’s major interests.

“We are so grateful for the visionary leadership of friends like Tom Bye and David Bohne,” says Alexandra Minna Stern, dean of humanities. “Their remarkable example shines a light on our core mission.”

“Tom and David’s philanthropy has already seeded new lines of research by students and faculty,” says Megha Sundara, professor and department chair of linguistics. “And in the years to come, the Bye lab program will ensure that UCLA Linguistics continues its legacy of research and academic excellence.”

Managed by a faculty committee, the funds have already provided graduate students with summer research opportunities, enabled projects on everything from experimental pragmatics to phonetics, and supported graduate student participation in multiple workshops, including electroencephalography training and the California Meeting on Psycholinguistics.

“The Bye Linguistics Laboratory Program has also allowed new hires like myself to integrate into existing psycholinguistics collaborations in ways that allow us to expand and experiment,” says Laurel Perkins, an assistant professor of linguistics who studies how young babies acquire the structure and meaning of their first language. “These resources have broadened the scope of the research that both our faculty and students are doing.”

Bye initially began his study of linguistics because he enjoyed the challenging nature of the discipline, which inspired him to start by earning his master’s from UCLA in 1972.

“I’ve always been fascinated by second language acquisition, partly because I spent my junior year in France and sometimes really struggled,” Bye says. “So that intrigued me and helped focus my interest.”

Bye also credits a mentor, Sandra Thompson, then a professor of linguistics at UCLA, for inspiring him.

“I was lucky enough to be chosen by Tom to be the chair of his dissertation committee,” says Thompson. “Tom’s research showed that when children give directions — say from their school to their home — they consistently assume too much knowledge on the part of their listeners; this was both an original discovery and a significant contribution to the field of psycholinguistics.”

After earning his doctorate, Bye chose a linguistics-adjacent career path in the K–12 arena. When the couple moved after Bohne, a Berkeley grad, was offered a job in the Bay Area, Bye accepted a position as a civil rights consultant for a federal agency charged with helping school districts develop effective programs for English learners. He later served as a K – 12 administrator and, in the 1990s, formed an education consulting firm and authored commercial English as a Second Language programs for Prentice Hall and McGraw-Hill Education.

UCLA was never far from their thoughts — in fact, Bye is a member of the dean’s advisory board for the division of humanities. So when the couple started to think about their legacy, Bye fondly remembered his time as a “baby Bruin” and the satisfaction he’s found ever since in the UCLA community.

“David likes to joke that I’m a meddling old coot, but I can’t help it — whenever something’s going on, or not going on, that I can help with, I get personally involved,” Bye says. “It’s fun to roll up my sleeves and contribute to UCLA in as many ways as I can.”

And so he and Bohne have built vibrant, enduring relationships across the UCLA College, especially when it comes to talking linguistics shop with professors and students in the department.

“We are grateful to Tom and David and think the world of them. It’s especially been a joy to get to know Tom, work with him and see how deeply he cares about the research and the people doing it at UCLA,” says Jesse Harris, associate professor of linguistics, who studies how adult speakers of a language rapidly decode speech and texts. “This is more than a crucial financial gift — Tom and David’s deep intellectual curiosity and engagement show an inspiring investment in the human impact of our work.”

A GENEROUS BEGINNING

I have a UCLA tumbler that says, “Discover where the humanities will take you.” They have taken me on a wild adventure where I get to combine my love for languages with technology. I graduated in 2017 with a degree in linguistics; today, I’m a software engineer at Tenyx, a 10-person speech recognition startup.

At UCLA, I made lifelong friendships with professors and classmates, and was able to turn my passion for language and fascination with puzzles and pattern recognition into a career I love. I also took an Honors Collegium course that completely reshaped my world view: “Philanthropy as Civic Engagement.”

In this course, we as a class were given $100,000 provided by local donors to allocate among three Los Angeles nonprofits. We started with 50 organizations, and the nonprofit I selected, Foundation for Women Warriors, made the final three. Our class ultimately funded one of the country’s first veteran-specific educational day care programs.

I wouldn’t be where or who I am without UCLA, and so I began donating as an undergraduate and continue on today. It was only a few years ago I was a broke college student — I know how grateful I was for “little” things like $250 scholarships, the Humanities Career Panel Series or free lunches at events. I also donate my

time to current students; this is my third year in the UCLA Alumni Mentor Program.

Even if fiscal contributions aren’t in your budget right now, you can give back to UCLA in creative ways. Never underestimate the ripple effects caused by one person doing one small, good deed!

—ANGIE HOWARD ’17