Two students awarded Critical Language Scholarships, three named alternates

Two Middlebury students who were awarded Critical Language Scholarships (CLS) and will spend part of their summer overseas intensively studying languages in preparation for related careers. 

The recipients and alternates and the languages they will study are as follows: 

Scholarship Recipients

• Colin McKinzie ’24, an International and Global Studies major concentrating on Russian and East European Studies, will study Portuguese.
• Samuel Wemmer ’26, an English and Biology major, will study Indonesian.

McKinzie and Wemmer are among approximately 500 students selected from 245 U.S. colleges and universities to receive the award for summer 2023.

Alternates 

• Catherine Kish ’24 a Political Science major, Chinese.
• Camille Mitchell ’23 a Chinese Language and Literature major, Chinese.
• Willow Stone ’24 an International Politics and Economics major concentrating on Russian Studies, Russian.

Sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, the CLS program provides full scholarships to students, with the aim of expanding the number of Americans studying and mastering critical languages. Languages offered through the program are those that are less commonly taught in the U.S., but deemed integral to U.S. engagement with the world. They include: Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Swahili, Turkish, or Urdu.