CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Three University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign students have been awarded U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarships to study a foreign language this summer. The Illinois recipients are Adam LoBue, of Brooklyn, New York; Jenny Peruski, of Bangkok; and Eileen Witthoff, of DeKalb, Illinois.
The Critical Language Scholarship Program is part of a U.S. government effort to expand dramatically the number of Americans studying and mastering critical foreign languages. It provides fully funded, group-based intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences. Over the past 10 years, the CLS Program has sent more than 5,000 American undergraduate and graduate students overseas to learn critical languages.
Each CLS participant spends eight to 10 weeks gaining a year’s worth of language study in one of 24 locations, studying Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Swahili, Turkish or Urdu. CLS Program participants are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship and apply their critical language skills in their future professional careers.
LoBue will study Swahili in Arusha, Tanzania. He received a B.A. in cultural anthropology from Boston University and an M.A. in near Eastern studies from New York University, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in history at Illinois. LoBue studies radical political and social movements in East Africa and their connections to regional and global activist and ideological networks, with a focus on print cultures and the politics of print production and circulation. His goal upon completing his doctoral studies is to become a professor of history at a research university.
Peruski will study Swahili in Kenya and Tanzania. She earned a B.A. in art history, near Eastern languages and cultures, and liberal arts and management from Indiana University. After receiving a master’s degree in Islamic art and architecture from the American University of Cairo, she worked at the Art Institute of Chicago as a research associate in Islamic art. Peruski recently began her doctoral studies in art history at Illinois, with a focus on Indian Ocean and East African Islamic art. She anticipates a curatorial or professorial career.
Witthoff, who just completed her freshman year in the Division of General Studies, will further her Hindi language skills in Jaipur, India. She previously spent 10 months as a high school exchange student in Gujarat, India, through the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study Program sponsored by the State Department. She then began formal training in Hindi as a student at Illinois. Witthoff aspires to teach English in India.
CLS Program participants are among the more than 50,000 academic and professional exchange program participants supported annually by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The CLS Program specifically encourages students from diverse backgrounds and academic majors to apply. These exchange programs build relations and respect between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The CLS Program is administered by American Councils for International Education.