KNOXVILLE — Samuel Doty, a senior at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has been selected for a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) to study Russian in Russia during the summer of 2010.
Doty, of Unicoi, is majoring in psychology, French and Russian. He plans to attend graduate school in social psychology.
“I’d like to become a specialist in conflict resolution. A language background, especially in a language as globally critical as Russian, will provide opportunities for involvement in the international political and policy arenas,” he said. “I’m very excited about the upcoming summer because I think the CLS program will enable a formative learning experience to guide my future education and career.”
This year, the U.S. Department of State has selected approximately 575 U.S. undergraduate and graduate students to study Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Persian, Russian, Indic (Bangla/Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu) and Turkic (Turkish and Azerbaijani) languages.
The students will spend seven to 10 weeks in intensive language institutes this summer in 15 countries where these languages are spoken. They also will support their language acquisition through cultural immersion activities. CLS program participants are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship and apply their critical language skills in their future professional careers.
The 2010 CLS program received nearly 5,300 applications. Students from a range of academic disciplines and U.S. colleges and universities from all 50 states were selected for scholarships in 2010 through a merit-based selection process.
The CLS program was launched in 2006 to increase opportunities for American students to study critical-need languages overseas and is part of a wider U.S. government effort to dramatically expand the number of Americans studying and mastering critical-need languages.
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. The CLS program is administered by the Council of American Overseas Research Centers and the American Councils for International Education.
For further information about the CLS program or the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, see http://www.clscholarship.org and http://exchanges.state.gov.
C O N T A C T :
Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)