PHILADELPHIA –- Six University of Pennsylvania students have been awarded U.S. State Department Critical Language Scholarships for study during the summer of 2011. The students are:

• Jeremy Brinster, who will study Arabic in Morocco.
• Jumanah Hassan, who will study Arabic in Jordan.
• Ellie Joles and Lin Yuan, who will study Chinese in China.
• Edgar Melgar, who will study Turkish in Turkey.
• Molly Reed. who will study Russian in Russia.

Five hundred seventy-five U.S. undergraduate and graduate students were selected to receive U.S. State Department CLS scholarships from among more than 5,200 applicants. The students will study Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla/Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Indonesian, Japanese, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish or Urdu in 14 countries.  CLS Program participants are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship and apply their language skills in their future professional careers. 

The U.S. Department of State launched the Critical Language Scholarships for Intensive Summer Institutes in 2006 to increase opportunities for American students to study critical-need languages overseas.  The program is part of a wider U.S. government effort to expand the number of Americans studying and mastering critical languages.  Further information about the CLS Program is available at http://www.clscholarship.org and http://exchanges.state.gov.