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Stuart Thomas, a May 9 graduate of Miami University, will spend his summer in Suzhou, China, with a scholarship from the U.S. Department of State.
Thomas received the “Critical Language Scholarship for Intensive Summer Institutes” from the state department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) to study Mandarin Chinese. While at Miami, Thomas was an international studies major, with minors in Chinese and French.
The Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) program offers intensive summer language institutes overseas in eleven critical need foreign languages for summer 2009. The CLS program launched in 2006 to offer overseas study 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. This summer, Azerbaijani is being offered at the intermediate and advanced levels.
The CLS program provides fully-funded 7-10-week group-based intensive language instruction and extensive cultural enrichment experiences overseas for U.S. undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students. The program is part of the National Security Language Initiative, a U.S. government interagency effort to expand the number of Americans studying and mastering critical-need foreign languages.
In the fall, Thomas will attend the University of Denver to begin a master’s program in international development at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies.
“I want to use my opportunity with the U.S. State Department and the CAORC to augment my ability to effectively communicate in Chinese,” Thomas said. “I hope to work in the future in the public or private sector helping to build and maintain positive relationships with Chinese government officials, businesses and citizens. I have a particular interest in helping to strengthen U.S.-China relations, as well as developing ways in which China and the U.S. can work together to alleviate poverty in China, Southeast Asia, and other parts of the world.”
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