Seven Middlebury Institute students have been selected as finalists for the competitive U.S. State Department funded Critical Language Scholarship (CLS). They will be studying languages considered critical to U.S. national security and economic prosperity in Indonesia, Morocco, Jordan, Oman, Brazil, China, and India.
“We had a very strong applicant pool,” says David Wick, faculty director of fellowships and assistant professor in the International Education Management degree program. “Of our 25 applicants, 13 were selected as finalists or alternates. The success rate for MIIS applicants is about four times better than the national average.”
Kelsey Keehfus MANPTS ’19, Jonelle Still MAIPD/MAITED ’19, and James Taylor MAIPD/MPA ’19 will be studying Arabic in Morocco, Jordan, and Oman, respectively. JoAnn Doll MAIEM ’19 will be studying Indonesian in Malang, East Java, and Umile Belmonte MATESOL ’19 will be studying Punjabi in Chandigarh, India. Adriana Threlkeld MAIPD ’19 is heading to Florianopolis in Brazil to study Portuguese, and Benjamin Wollam MAITED ’19 will travel to Changchun, China to work on his Mandarin skills.
CLS is a perfect program for MIIS students. These intensive overseas language and culture immersion programs help students from every area of study at MIIS to deepen language proficiency or develop competency in new language.
“CLS is a perfect program for MIIS students. These intensive overseas language and culture immersion programs help students from every area of study at MIIS to deepen language proficiency or develop competency in new languages,” Wick says, adding that these awards also provide strong foundations for applications to other US government-funded programs such as Boren Fellowships and Fulbright Awards. “We are pleased to see so many of our students competing for CLS awards and hope that their success will inspire many others to work with me to prepare applications in the fall for the next application cycle.”
Jason Warburg
jwarburg@middlebury.edu
831-647-3516
Eva Gudbergsdottir
evag@middlebury.edu
831-647-6606
Students Bryce Bray and Siobhan Gibbons each learned this week that they won a Boren Fellowship, the first time that two students from the MA in International Environmental Policy program have ever been awarded a Boren in the same year.
At least seven Middlebury Institute students have been offered a summer fellowship at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva, Switzerland. The organization and the Institute recently renewed their decade-old memorandum of understanding (MOU).
| by Eva Gudbergsdottir
Middlebury Institute graduate Sylvia Mishra has been awarded the highly competitive Scoville Fellowship and will be working with the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington, DC.
