Three University of North Georgia students have been chosen for the Critical Language Scholarship Program to study abroad this summer, while two others have been named alternates.
The three finalists are: Madison Brooks of Tallapoosa, a junior double majoring in Arabic and French; Micaela Tierce of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, a junior majoring in international affairs with a Middle Eastern concentration; and, Thomas Vella of Decatur, a freshman majoring in strategic studies
The semifinalists/alternates are: Lily O’Clery of Gainesville, a senior majoring in Chinese and minoring in Korean, and Marissa Wilborn of Auburn, Georgia, a sophomore majoring in Arabic and minoring in global leadership.
The scholarship, a program of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, funds American undergraduate and graduate students to complete intensive language study abroad in the summer. CLS is a very competitive scholarship with acceptance rates hovering around 10 percent each year; from the more than 5,000 applications submitted each year, only some 500 are selected.
This year's number of recipients for UNG exceeds the total number of CLS winners since 2013, in part because 16 students applied this year. UNG has had two previous CLS winners and three other semifinalists.
