Mattias Miller ’21 and Christina Oh ’22 have been awarded a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) to study less commonly taught languages during summer 2021.
The Carolina awardees are among the nearly 700 U.S. undergraduate and graduate students who received a CLS award in 2021. Recipients will spend eight to 10 weeks at intensive language institutes around the world. As they did in 2020, many institutes will offer virtual programs this summer.
The CLS Program is part of a U.S. government effort to dramatically expand the number of Americans studying and mastering critical
foreign languages. It provides fully funded, group-based intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences. Program participants are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship and apply their critical language skills in their future professional careers.
More than 50,000 academic and professional exchange program participants are supported annually by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Part of the bureau’s mission is to increase diversity among international educational exchange program participants and promote mutual understanding and respect between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.
UNC-Chapel Hill students may visit the Office of Distinguished Scholarships’ website for more information about the award and support available to applicants. The competition for summer 2022 will open in the fall 2021.
2021 Critical Language Scholarship Recipients
- Mattias Miller ’21, a business journalism and Asian studies double major, will study Chinese.
- Christina Oh ’22, a linguistics and Germanic and Slavic languages and literatures double major and music minor, will study Russian.
Learn more about CLS on the U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship Program website.
By Rawan Abbasi, UNC Global