Truman Students Selected for State Department Scholarship

Margaret Wilcox and Luke Bishop have both been selected to receive the U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship for summer 2016.

The CLS program is part of a U.S. government effort to expand dramatically the number of Americans studying and mastering critical foreign languages. These exchange programs are designed to build relations and respect between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.

Wilcox will study Swahili in Arusha, Tanzania. Bishop will study Azerbaijani in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Approximately 560 undergraduate and graduate students received the CLS for 2016. Selected finalists fail from 48 states and the District of Columbia, and represent more than 200 institutes of higher education.

Each CLS participant will spend eight to 10 weeks in one of 24 locations studying Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Indonesian, Japanese, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Swahili, Turkish or Urdu. CLS participants are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship and apply their critical language skills in their future professional careers.