Reach: Summer 2009

Eleven CLA students are spending the summer overseas as part of a federal government effort to dramatically increase the number of Americans who are proficient in what it deems "critical languages." Eight of the 11 languages are taught in CLA: Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Persian, Russian, Turkish, and Urdu.

The Department of State's Critical Language Scholarships for Intensive Summer Institutes Program, launched in 2006, sends students to participate in intensive language and cultural study institutes in countries where the targeted languages are spoken.

Recipients are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship period and apply their critical language skills in their careers—which, in the case of the U of M winners, range from neuroscience to linguistics, anthropology to public affairs.

See the full list of awardees, their majors, and the languages they are studying at: http://cla.umn.edu/teachResearch/students.php