Cooper Horton, a UCA student double-majoring in Linguistics and International Studies, was recently awarded the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) by the U.S. Department of State. The CLS program is an “immersive summer opportunity for American college and university students to learn languages essential to America’s engagement with the world.” Each summer, students enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities spend two months learning one of thirteen languages at an intensive study abroad institute. The critical languages include Arabic, Azerbaijani, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, Turkish, and Urdu. 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.” The CLS program will enable Cooper to study the Russian language in Kyrgyzstan in June and July 2024. Cooper, who is also minoring in Honors Interdisciplinary Studies, previously studied the Russian language during a semester abroad program in Kazakhstan in Spring 2023.