Nine students from UNC receive critical language scholarships

Nine students from UNC have been awarded a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) to study critical needs languages during the summer of 2013.

The students, their languages, and host countries are:

  • Joseph Calder Jr., Persian, Tajikistan;
  • Nathan D’Ambrosio, Arabic, Morocco;
  • Fareeda Zikry, Arabic, Jordan;
  • Philip Delvecchio, Chinese, China;
  • Brandon Johnson, Chinese, China;
  • Matthew Cheek, Persian,Tajikistan;
  • Kathryn Pribble, Russian, Russia;
  • Allison Kanner, Turkish, Turkey; and
  • Elizabeth Whitfield, Urdu, India.

These students are among the approximately 610 U.S. undergraduate and graduate students who received a scholarship from the U.S. Department of State’s CLS Program in 2013. CLS participants will spend seven to ten weeks in intensive language institutes this summer in one of 13 countries to study Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Indonesian, Japanese, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish, or Urdu.

The CLS Program is part of a U.S. government effort to expand dramatically the number of Americans studying and mastering critical foreign languages. It provides fully-funded, group-based intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences.  CLS Program participants are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship and apply their critical language skills in their future professional careers.

CLS Program participants are among the more than 40,000 academic and professional exchange program participants supported annually by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to promote mutual understanding and respect between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.

For more information, visit http://www.clscholarship.org and http://exchanges.state.gov.