3 Williams Students Win Language Scholarships
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Williams College senior Elly Teitsworth, junior Jessica Harris and sophomore Brent Eng have been awarded U.S. Department of State 2010 Critical Language Scholarships.The scholarship was launched in 2006 to increase the opportunities for American students to study critical-need languages overseas and is part of a larger U.S. government effort to dramatically expand the number of Americans studying and mastering critical-need languages.
In 2010, nearly 5,300 applications were received from students from a wide range of academic disciplines, colleges and universities, and from all 50 states. Five hundred seventy-five undergraduate and graduate students were selected through a merit-based selection process to study Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Persian, Russian, Indic (Bangla/Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu), and Turkic (Turkish and Azerbaijani) languages. Students will spend seven to 10 weeks at language institutes in 15 countries and enhance their language acquisition through cultural immersion activities.
Teitsworth is a mathematics major and international studies concentrator from Ridgefield, Conn. She will study Arabic in Tangier, Morocco.
Harris is majoring in Chinese and is from Cortlandt Manor, N.Y. This summer, she will study Chinese at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.
Eng is from Sacramento, Calif. A writing fellow at Mount Greylock Regional High School, he also will spend the summer in Tangier and afterward attend the Williams-Exeter Program at Oxford, England.
