Two students from Prince George's Community College participated in the U.S. Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program this summer. The pair are among approximately 500 American students at U.S. colleges and universities who were selected from over 5,000 applicants to study more than a dozen languages overseas or virtually. Fatima Kirkland-EL studied Arabic in the CLS program and will transfer to the University of Maryland this fall. Emily Vanegas, a computer science student at PGCC, studied Chinese in the CLS program.
The CLS Program is part of a U.S. government effort to increase the number of Americans studying critical foreign languages. CLS scholars gain language and cultural skills that enable them to contribute to U.S. economic competitiveness and national security. The CLS Program provides opportunities to U.S. undergraduate and graduate students to spend eight to ten weeks studying one of over a dozen critical languages: Arabic, Azerbaijani, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, Turkish, or Urdu. The program includes intensive language instruction and cultural enrichment experiences to promote rapid language gains.
To learn more about the Critical Language Scholarship Program, visit the website.