Sahrula Kubie CC'14 and Shamm Petros CC'14 were among the 10 Columbia University students who were awarded 2012 Critical Language Scholarships (CLS) by the US Department of State. Kubie will go to Russia to study the language and Petros will study Arabic in Oman.  

These students are among the approximately 575 U.S. undergraduate and graduate students who received a scholarship from the U.S. Department of State’s CLS Program in 2012 to study Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla/Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Indonesian, Japanese, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish, or Urdu languages.  U.S. students will spend seven to ten weeks in intensive language institutes this summer in 14 countries where these languages are spoken.  The CLS Program provides fully-funded, group-based intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences.  CLS Program participants are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship and apply their critical language skills in their future professional careers.  

The CLS Program is part of a U.S. government effort to expand dramatically the number of Americans studying and mastering critical foreign languages. Selected finalists for the 2012 CLS Program hail from all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia and represent 239 institutions of higher education from across the United States, including public and private universities, liberal arts colleges, minority-serving institutions and community colleges.

For further information about the CLS Program or other exchange programs offered by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, please visit their websites at http://www.clscholarship.org and http://exchanges.state.gov.