My research interests in Education are focused on higher education assessments, the responsible use of AI in education, equity and cross-cultural considerations, and the assessment and development of soft skills.
My research interests in Linguistics lie somewhere in the constellation of syntax, semantics and psycholinguistics. My dissertation in Syntax and Psycholinguistics on pronominal reference in Romanian was supported by an NSF DDRI grant awarded to me and Brian Dillon (PI), for which (and to whom) I am very grateful.
PUBLICATIONS
Education & AI in Education
Walsh, Cole, Rodica Ivan, Muhammad Zafar Iqbal, and Colleen Robb. 2025."Using LLMs to identify features of personal and professional skills in an open-response situational judgment test". arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.13881. Accepted at the 2025 Artificial Intelligence in Measurement and Education Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.
Bulut, O., Beiting-Parrish, M., Casabianca, J., Slater, S., Jiao, H., Song, D., Ormerod, C., Fabiyi, D. G., Ivan, R., Walsh, C., Rios, O., Wilson, J., Yildirim-Erbasli, S., Liu, X., Wongvorachan, T., Liu, J. X., Tan, B., & Morilova, P. 2025. "Application of artificial intelligence in educational measurement: opportunities and ethical challenges". Chinese/English Journal of Educational Measurement and Evaluation, 5(3).
Iqbal, Muhammad Zafar, Rodica Ivan, Colleen Robb, & Jillian Derby. 2025. Evaluating factors that impact scoring an open response situational judgment test: a mixed methods approach. Frontiers in Medicine, 11.
Akbari-Kamrani, Marjan, Sara Mortaz Hejri, Rodica Ivan, & Reza Yousefi-Nooraie. 2023. "Social Dynamics of Advice-Seeking: A Network Analysis of Two Residency Programs". In Teaching and Learning in Medicine. doi: 10.1080/10401334.2023.2168671
Mortaz Hejri, Sara, Rodica Ivan, & Nimo Jama. 2022. Assessment through a cross-cultural lens in North American higher education. In Frontiers in Education, 7: 1012722. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2022.1012722.
Linguistics
Giurgea, Ion and Rodica Ivan. 2025. "Two Types of Anaphoric Relations in Pronouns: Consequences for Their Syntactic Analysis". In Proceedings of WCCFL 41. Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA, USA.
Giurgea, Ion & Rodica Ivan. 2023. "On the Internal Structure of Pronouns: From the Perspective of Noun Ellipsis". Revue roumaine de linguistique. 10.59277/ RRL.2023.4.01.
Bleotu, Adina Camelia, Lyn Tieu, Gabriela Bîlbîie, Anton Benz, Mara Panaitescu, Rodica Ivan, & Andreea C. Nicolae. 2024. "On the conjunctive interpretation of the disjunction 'fie...fie’ in child Romanian". Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 28, 190–199. Bochum: Ruhr-University Bochum. https://doi.org/10.18148/sub/2024.v28.1116
Bleotu, Adina Camelia, Rodica Ivan, Andreea C. Nicolae, Gabriela Bîlbîie, Anton Benz, Mara Panaitescu, & Lyn Tieu. 2023. "Not all complex disjunctions are alike: On inclusive and conjunctive interpretations in child Romanian". Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 45.
Bleotu, Adina Camelia & Rodica Ivan. 2023. "SE figure reflexives alternate with Voice in Romanian: Insights from a semi-artificial denominal paradigm". Proceedings of the Chicago Linguistic Society 58, 29-45.
Bleotu, Adina Camelia & Rodica Ivan. 2022. "Voice Alternation in SE figure reflexives in Romanian: Evidence from a semi-artificial paradigm". In G. Alboiu, D. Isac, A. Nicolae, M. Tanase-Dogaru & A. Tigau, A Life in Linguistics: A Festschrift for Alexandra Cornilescu on her 75th Birthday, pp. 79-101. Bucuresti: Editura Universitatii Bucuresti.
Ivan, Rodica, Brian Dillon, & Kyle Johnson. 2021. (Bound) Pronouns in Competition: Evidence from Comprehension. In Proceedings of WCCFL 39. Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA, USA. [Pre-print]
Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica and Thuy Bui. 2019. Vietnamese Anaphora: Binding Principles and the Lack Thereof. In Ryan Bochnak, Erlinde Meertens, and Mark- Matthias Zymla (eds.), Proceedings of TripleA 5: Fieldwork Perspectives on the Semantics of African, Asian, and Austronesian Languages. University of Tübingen. [Pre-print]
Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. 2019. "Wh-phrases and context restriction in Yalalag Zapotec". In Alex Goebel & Kimberly Johnson (eds.), Proceedings of the 10th Meeting of the Semantics of Under-Represented Languages in the Americas. Amherst: GLSA. [Pre-print]
Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica & Deniz Özyıldız. 2018. "The temporal presuppositions of Somali definite determiners". In Robert Truswell, Chris Cummins, Caroline Heycock, Brian Rabern, and Hannah Rohde (eds.), SuB 21: Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 21. University of Edinburgh.
Özyıldız, Deniz & Rudmila-Rodica Ivan. 2017. "Pronouns under the Somali microscope". In Vera Hohaus and Wanda Rothe (eds.), Proceedings of TripleA 3: Fieldwork Perspectives on the Semantics of African, Asian and Austronesian Languages. Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen, Publikationssystem.
Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. 2016. "Wonder if embedded, know whether semi-question". In Kate Bellamy, Elena Karvovskaya and George Saad, (eds.), ConSOLE XXIV: Proceedings of the 24th Conference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe. Leiden: Leiden University Centre for Linguistics.
Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. 2013. "Wondering about Oare: is it a Q-particle for Romanian?". In Balázs Surányi (ed.), Proceedings of the Second Central European Conference in Linguistics for Postgraduate Students. Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest.
THESES
Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. 2020. Talking about her(self): Ambiguity Avoidance and Principle B. A Theoretical and Psycholinguistic Investigation of Romanian Pronouns. PhD thesis, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Committee: Brian Dillon, Kyle Johnson, Lyn Frazier, Adrian Staub, Marcel den Dikken
Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. 2013. On The Syntax of Complementation Types, MA thesis, University of Bucharest. Advisor: Alexandra Cornilescu
Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. 2011. Multiple Questions and Wh-Movement in English and German, BA Thesis, University of Bucharest. Advisor: Alexandra Cornilesc
EDITED VOLUMES
Ivan, Rodica. 2018. UMOP 40: The Leader of the Pack: A Festschrift in Honor of Peggy Speas. Amherst: GLSA
Bui, Thuy and Rudmila-Rodica Ivan, eds. 2016. SULA 9: Proceedings of the 9th Meeting of the Semantics of Under-Represented Languages in the Americas. Amherst: GLSA.
INVITED PRESENTATIONS
Ivan, Rodica. 2020. Ambiguity Avoidance and Principle B. University of Delaware, USA. November 2020.
Ivan, Rodica. 2020. Talking about her(self): Ambiguity Avoidance in Romanian Anaphora Production. Oakland University, USA. January 2020.
Ivan, Rodica. 2020. Talking about her(self): Ambiguity Avoidance in Romanian Anaphora Production. University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. January 2020.
Mirrazi, Zahra & Rodica Ivan. 2017. Farsi Fake Indexicals: Reconciling Kratzer (2009) and Wurmbrand (2017). University of Tehran, Iran. June 2018.
REFEREED CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
Education
Ivan, Rodica, Alex MacIntosh, Okan Bulut, Jinnie Shin, Gina M. Musolino, LaVona Traywick, Paul A. Salmh, & Matthew Condo. 2023. Ethical AI in health professions education: Co-creating an ethical framework to ensure responsible AI use. 18th Annual Education Leadership Conference, Philadelphia, PA, US, 13-15 October 2023.
Ivan, Rodica, Alex MacIntosh, Matthew J. de Ruig, Dawn James, LaTisha Standokes, LaVona Traywick, David Bringman, Gina M. Musolino, John Fox, Paul A. Salamh, Sara. F. Maher, Vicky Pardo, & Matthew Condo. 2023. Surveying holistic admissions: A qualitative study across six different DPT programs. 18th Annual Education Leadership Conference, Philadelphia, PA, United States, 13-15 October 2023.
Ivan, Rodica, Vivian Huang, Alexander MacIntosh, Matthew J. de Ruig, Dawn James, LaTisha P. Standokes, LaVona Traywick, David Bringman, Gina Musolino, Matthew P. Condo, John Fox, Paul A. Salamh, Sara F. Maher, Vicky M. Pardo. Addressing disparities in PT admissions: Identifying demographic differences in admission across multiple programs. The 17th Annual Physical Therapy Education Leadership Conference (ELC 2022). Milwaukee, Wisconsin. October 2002.
[poster] Ivan, Rodica, Vivian Huang, Alexander MacIntosh, Matthew J. de Ruig, Dawn James, LaTisha P. Standokes, LaVona Traywick, Gina Musolino, Matthew P. Condo, John Fox, Sara F. Maher, Vicky M. Pardo. Merged PT admissions data: investigating demographic differences in admission metrics across four different programs. The 17th Annual Physical Therapy Education Leadership Conference (ELC 2022). Milwaukee, Wisconsin. October 2002.
Binding, Reflexivity, & Anaphora
[poster] Giurgea, Ion & Rodica Ivan. 2023. Two types of anaphoric relations in pronouns: Consequences for their syntactic analysis. 41st West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 41), UC Santa Cruz, California, United States, 5-7 May 2023.
Giurgea, Ion & Rodica Ivan. 2022. On the relation between definite pronouns and definite determiners. The 22nd International Conference of the Department of Linguistics of the University of Bucharest). University of Bucharest, Romania. November 2002.
Bleotu, Camelia & Rodica Ivan. 2022. Voice Alternation in SE figure reflexives in Romanian: Evidence from a semi-artificial paradigm. The 45th Generative Linguistics in the Old World (GLOW 45). Queen Mary University of London, UK. April 2022.
Bleotu, Camelia & Rodica Ivan. 2022. Voice Alternation in SE figure reflexives in Romanian: Evidence from a semi-artificial paradigm. The 58th Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS 58). University of Chicago, USA. April 2022.
Ivan, Rodica. 2021. Deriving Condition B Effects: Be Small, but Clear! The 22nd Annual Conference of the English Department of the University of Bucharest (AICED 22). University of Bucharest, Romania. June 2021.
Bleotu, Camelia & Rodica Ivan. 2021. Probing into SE figure reflexives through a semiartificial paradigm. The 22nd Annual Conference of the English Department of the University of Bucharest (AICED 22). University of Bucharest, Romania. June 2021.
[poster] Ivan, Rodica, Brian Dillon, & Kyle Johnson. 2021. (Bound) Pronouns in Competition: Evidence from Romanian Comprehension. West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 39 (WCCFL 39). University of Arizona, USA. April 2021.
[short talk] Ivan, Rodica, Brian Dillon, & Kyle Johnson. 2021. Choosing a Referring Expression: Intrasentential Ambiguity Avoidance in Romanian. CUNY 34. University of Pennsylvania, USA, March 2021.
Ivan, Rodica & Brian Dillon. 2020. (Bound) Pronouns in Competition: Evidence from Romanian Production. West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 38 (WCCFL 38). UBC, Vancouver, Canada. March 2020.
[poster] Bui, Thuy and Rudmila-Rodica Ivan. 2019. Vietnamese Anaphora: An Argument for Binding Theory Competition-Based Accounts . The 2019 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA 2019). New York, NY. January 2019.
Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica and Thuy Bui. 2018. Vietnamese Anaphora: Binding Principles and the Lack Thereof. The 5th Meeting of the Semantics of African, Asian, and Austronesian Languages (TripleA 5). University of Konstanz, Germany. June 2018.
Ivan, Rodica. 2018. No condition B? Context-dependent surface-form preference! Pronouns in Competition Workshop. UC Santa Cruz, CA. April 2018
[poster] Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. 2018. No interpreted features? No Principle B!. West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 36 (WCCFL 36). UCLA, April 2018.
Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. 2017. Absent Condition B effects: the case of Romanian PPs. The 19th Annual Conference of the English Department of the University of Bucharest (AICED 19). University of Bucharest, Romania. June 2017.
Acquisition of Disjunction
[poster] Bleotu, Adina Camelia, Rodica Ivan, Gabriela Bîlbîie, Monica Casa, Mara Panaitescu, Anton Benz, Lyn Tieu, & Andreea Nicolae. The conjunctive interpretation of disjunction is not just an experimental artifact: Insights from marked and unmarked disjunctions in child Romanian. 10th Biennial Meeting of Experimental Pragmatics (XPRAG), Université Paris Cité, Paris, 20 September 2023.
Bleotu, Adina Camelia, Rodica Ivan, Gabriela Bîlbîie, Monica Casa, Mara Panaitescu, Anton Benz, Lyn Tieu, & Andreea Nicolae. Multiple disjunctions in child Romanian: On the possible sources of conjunctive readings. Sinn und Bedeutung 28, Ruhr University Bochum, 5-8 September 2023.
[poster] Bleotu, Adina Camelia, Rodica Ivan, Gabriela Bîlbîie, Monica Casa, Mara Panaitescu, Andreea Nicolae, Anton Benz, & Lyn Tieu. Investigating the effect of prosodic markedness on the interpretation of simple disjunction in Romanian. 29th Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing (AMLaP 29), San Sebastian, Spain, 31 August - 2 September 2023.
[poster] Bleotu, Adina Camelia, Rodica Ivan, Gabriela Bîlbîie, Monica Casa, Mara Panaitescu, Anton Benz, Lyn Tieu, & Andreea Nicolae. Evidence from child Romanian for the conjunctive interpretation of disjunction. 29th Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing (AMLaP 29), San Sebastian, Spain, 31 Aug - 2 Sept 2023.
[poster] Bleotu, Adina Camelia, Rodica Ivan, Gabriela Bîlbîie, Monica Casa, Mara Panaitescu, Andreea Nicolae, Anton Benz & Lyn Tieu. 2023. Not all complex disjunctions are alike: On inclusive and conjunctive interpretations in child Romanian. CogSci 2023, Sydney, Australia, 26-29 July. [poster]
Bleotu, Adina Camelia, Rodica Ivan, Gabriela Bîlbîie, Monica Casa, Mara Panaitescu, Andreea Nicolae, Anton Benz & Lyn Tieu. 2023. Insights into the acquisition of simple and complex disjunction markers in Romanian. 53rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL 53), INALCO, Paris, 26-30 June.
[poster] Bleotu, Adina Camelia, Rodica Ivan, Gabriela Bîlbîie, Monica Casa, Mara Panaitescu, Andreea Nicolae, Anton Benz & Lyn Tieu. 2023. Experimental insights into markedness and the interpretation of disjunction in Romanian. 36th Annual Conference on Human Sentence Processing (HSP 36), University of Pittsburgh, 11 March.
Bleotu, Adina Camelia, Rodica Ivan, Gabriela Bîlbîie, Monica Casa, Mara Panaitescu, Andreea Nicolae, Anton Benz & Lyn Tieu. 2022. Simple and complex disjunction in Romanian: An experimental approach. Advances in Generative Grammar Workshop, Annual International Conference of the Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Bucharest. November 2022.
Pronouns & Agreement
Ivan, Rodica & Zahra Mirrazi. 2019. Minimal pronouns & T-Agreement effects: the case of Farsi Fake Indexicals.The 42nd Annual Meeting of Generative Linguistics in the Old World: Workshop 1: Anaphora at the syntax-semantics-pragmatics interface in endangered and understudied languages (GLOW 42). Oslo, Norway. May 2019.
Ivan, Rodica & Zahra Mirrazi. 2019. Farsi Fake Indexicals & embedded T Agreement: Predication Matters! The 2019 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA 2019). New York, NY. January 2019.
[poster] Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. 2018. Romanian loves Me: Clitic Clusters, Ethics & Cyclic AGREE. . The 49th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS 49). Cornell, NY. October 2018.
[poster] Mirrazi, Zahra & Rudmila-Rodica Ivan. 2017. Farsi Fake Indexicals: Reconciling Kratzer (2009) and Wurmbrand (2017). The 5th Meeting of the Semantics of African, Asian, and Austronesian Languages (TripleA 5). University of Konstanz, Germany. June 2018.
NPI Illusions
[poster] Ivan, Rodica & Brian Dillon. When NPI illusions fail: the case of strict NPIs and neg-words in Romanian. West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 36 (WCCFL 36). UCLA, CA. April 2018.
[poster] Ivan, Rodica & Brian Dillon. When NPI illusions fail: the case of strict NPIs and neg-words in Romanian. The 31st Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference (CUNY 31). UC Davis, CA. March 2018.
Pronouns & Definiteness
Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. Wh-phrases and context restriction in Yalalag Zapotec. Semantics of Under-Represented Languages in the Americas 10 (SULA 10). University of Toronto, Canada. May 2018.
Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica & Deniz Özyıldız. The temporal presuppositions of Somali definite determiners. Sinn und Bedeutung 21 (SuB 21). University of Edinburgh, Scotland. September 2016.
Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica & Deniz Özyıldız. The temporal presuppositions of Somali definite determiners. The 3rd Meeting of the Semantics of African, Asian, and Austronesian Languages (TripleA 3). University of Tübingen, Germany. July 2016.
Özyıldız, Deniz & Rudmila-Rodica Ivan. Pronouns under the Somali microscope. The 3rd Meeting of the Semantics of African, Asian, and Austronesian Languages (TripleA 3). University of Tübingen, Germany. July 2016.
Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica & Deniz Özyıldız. The temporal presuppositions of Somali definite determiners. Definiteness Across Languages Workshop (DAL). Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México & El Colegio de México, Mexico. June 2016.
[poster] Özyıldız, Deniz & Rudmila-Rodica Ivan. The Somali microscope: Personal pronouns, determiners, possession. Definiteness Across Languages Workshop (DAL). Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México & El Colegio de México, Mexico. June 2016.
Özyıldız, Deniz & Rudmila-Rodica Ivan. The Somali microscope: Personal pronouns, determiners, possession. Annual Conference on African Linguistics 47 (ACAL 47). UC Berkeley, CA. March 2016.
wh-phenomena
Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. Wh-phrases and context restriction in Yalalag Zapotec. Semantics of Under-Represented Languages in the Americas 10 (SULA 10). University of Toronto, Canada. May 2018.
[best poster award] Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. Wonder if embedded, know whether semi-question. The 24th Conference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe (ConSOLE XXIV). York, UK. January 2016.
[poster] Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. Grammaticalization in the Making: Romanian wh-words and their complementizer counterparts. CECILS 3, Peter Pazmany Catholic University. Budapest, Hungary. August 2013.
Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. The Relativity of 'CARE'. Student Conference of the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures. University of Bucharest, Romania. May 2013.
[poster] Ivan, Rudmila-Rodica. Wondering about Oare: is it a Q-particle for Romanian?. CECILS 2, Peter Pazmany Catholic University, Budapest, Hungary. August 2012.