Here are a couple of great opportunities students (and alums in grad school) should consider.
1. The National Flagship Language Program
The Language Flagship leads the nation in designing, supporting, and implementing a new paradigm for advanced language education. Through an innovative partnership between the federal government, education, and business, The Language Flagship seeks to graduate students who will take their place among the next generation of global professionals, commanding a superior level of fluency in one of many languages critical to U.S. competitiveness and security.
The Language Flagship, initiated in 2002 as the National Flagship Language Program, represents a bold and unprecedented effort to address the urgent need for professionals with advanced competency in critical languages. Through a combination of innovative and intensive campus curricula and overseas immersion, each full-time Flagship Program is designed to achieve professional proficiency, or level 3 as designated by the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) in the target language. Flagship programs are now available in Arabic, Chinese, Hindi/Urdu, Korean, Persian/Farsi, and Eurasian Languages (Russian, Central Asian). More details here; deadline is January 18
2. Department of State Critical Language Scholarships
Sponsored by the United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and administered by the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, the Critical Language Scholarships Program was launched in 2006. In its inaugural year, the Program offered intensive overseas study in the critical need foreign languages of Arabic, Bangla/Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi, Turkish and Urdu. In 2007, Chinese, Korean, Persian, and Russian institutes were added along with increased student capacity in the inaugural language institutes. The Program is part of the National Security Language Initiative (NSLI), a U.S. government interagency effort to expand dramatically the number of Americans studying and mastering critical need foreign languages. Scholarship recipients - U.S. citizen undergraduate, Master's and Ph.D. students and recent graduates - receive funding to participate in beginning, intermediate and advanced level summer language programs at American Overseas Research Centers and affiliated partners. Recipients are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship period and later apply their critical language skills in their professional careers.
Information on the 2008 institutes and application process will be available in mid-December. Click here to be notified by email when program information and the on-line application system are available. General information here.
