NEWS

Ilia State University hosted a meeting with the representatives of the U.S. Department of State and The American Councils. The meeting was dedicated to discussing the future collaboration within the frames of Critical Languages Scholarship (CLS) programme as well as the possibility of partnering up with ISU as a host institution.

The Critical Language Scholarship Program (CLS) provides opportunities for American college and university students to study languages and cultures essential to America's engagement with the world. The program offers eight-week language institutes for the study of a critical foreign language overseas. A program of the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), the CLS Program is a fully-funded group-based program for American
undergraduate and graduate students. The CLS Programs offer intensive language instruction in an immersion environment, with additional structured cultural enrichment experiences. 

The CLS Program sends approximately 550 students overseas to study one of 14 languages including Arabic, Chinese, Indic (Bangla, Hindi, Urdu), Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili and Turkic (Azerbaijani and Turkish).

Each summer, American undergraduate and graduate students enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities across the country, spend eight to ten weeks learning one of fourteen languages at an intensive study abroad institute. The CLS Program is designed to promote rapid language gains and essential intercultural fluency in regions that are critical to U.S. national security and economic prosperity.

2023