David Miller of Hixson has been selected for the U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship program to study Mandarin Chinese in China during the summer of 2012.
Mr. Miller, a rising senior at Kenyon College in Ohio, is among the approximately 630 U.S. undergraduate and graduate students selected for 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. David is currently spending eight weeks in Beijing at an intensive language institute and living with a host family.
The CLS Program provides fully-funded, group-based intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences designed to increase language fluency and cultural competency. 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 public and private universities from across the United States, including land-grant universities, liberal arts colleges, minority-serving institutions, and community colleges.
David has participated in a number of cultural enrichment activities as part of his CLS experience. In addition to visiting the Great Wall and local travel around Beijing, his group of 30 went on a five-day trek to Inner Mongolia. He has been able to communicate with his family in Hixson through Skype. Upon his return in mid-August, David will resume his studies at Kenyon College where he is an English major with a minor in Chinese. He plans to apply for a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship upon graduation and then attend law school.