Two Michigan State University students have been awarded a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship to study critical needs languages this summer.
Rita Erickson will study Arabic in Morocco and Joseph Longo, a member of the Honors College, will study Chinese in China. Both are majoring in international relations.
They join approximately 550 students from U.S. colleges and universities who received a scholarship in 2018. CLS participants will spend eight to 10 weeks in intensive language instruction in one of 14 countries to study Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Swahili, Turkish or Urdu.
The CLS Program is a government initiative to expand the number of Americans studying and mastering foreign languages. CLS recipients participate in an intensive overseas language and cultural immersion program. Scholars are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship and apply their critical language skills in their future careers.
Recipients of the 2018 CLS awards include students from more than 230 institutions across the United States, including public and private universities, liberal arts colleges, minority-serving institutions and community colleges.
