The 2011-12 academic year’s Foreign Language and Area Studies scholars were recently announced, and they will soon use their stipends to study a foreign language intensively. Winners were determined and announced by Brigham Young University’s Center for the Study of Europe and Asian Studies program.
Selected from an applicant pool of approximately 300, the 30 recipients of the scholarship will receive full-tuition scholarships for the academic-year as well as a $5,000 stipend, which may be used to finance a student’s travel to another country in order to study their chosen language more in-depth.
FLAS aims to promote less commonly taught Asian and European languages. This group of students will study languages as diverse as Polish and Indonesian, and to do so, many of them will travel outside of Utah and the United States. As the demand for less-commonly-taught languages is increasing at the FBI and on other lists of desirable languages, there is a supply of these language speakers being trained at BYU.
FLAS scholars are undergraduate and graduate students from a variety of majors, yet they are united in their love for language. These are just a few of the recipients and their interests:
Matthew McCullough is double majoring in political science and Italian and hopes to specialize in international law in Italy. This summer he will intern with an Italian law firm in Siena.
“Receiving the FLAS grant will help me to continue to study the Italian language and culture, which will be very valuable to me in my chosen career,” said McCullough.
Jacob Kunzler, who is studying English and Portuguese, said winning the FLAS scholarship “was a huge relief to me, because these last few semesters have been very stressful, trying to juggle everything.”
Ashley Erickson is a law student who will study Dutch at BYU. Erickson hopes to increase her marketability as a practitioner of international law.
“The FLAS grant will help me continue studying the language and culture I love in a way I may not have been able to do in law school without this grant,” she said.
Jacob Yingling, a chemical engineering student who will study Portuguese, said, “I have been given the opportunity to invest in a deep cultural experience that will enhance my ability to be a part of the global economy. Not only will I have a better understanding of international research, but I will be capable of providing my own research to more audiences.”
For more information on the FLAS and other awards, visit kennedy.byu.edu/student/scholarships.php.
Writer: Caroly Haynie
