3 Rice students win Dept. of State Critical Language Scholarships

Three Rice students are among undergraduate and graduate students from 200 institutions of higher education from across the country to receive a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship (CLS).

Esmat Elhalaby, Kira Wegner-Clemens and Jonas Wittke will spend seven to 10 weeks in intensive language institutes this summer in one of 13 countries to study Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Indonesian, Japanese, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish or Urdu.

The CLS program is part of a U.S. government effort to expand dramatically the number of Americans studying and mastering critical foreign languages. The program provides fully funded group-based intensive language instruction and structured cultural-enrichment activities; participants are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship and apply their critical language skills in their professional careers.

Esmat Elhalaby

Elhalaby, a graduate student in history from San Diego will study Urdu in Lucknow, India.

“My study of Urdu stems from my interest in South Asian history and literature,” Elhalaby said. “Reading people that wrote in Urdu — Abul Kalam Azad and Faiz Ahmed Faiz, especially — made me want to learn the language.”

In 2014 Elhalaby studied Urdu at the South Asian Summer Language Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Elhalaby is already fluent in Arabic, so he is excited to spend time in India honing his Urdu.

“My dissertation research looks at connections between Urdu and Arabic-speaking intellectuals in South Asia and the Middle East, so learning Urdu is an important part of that research,” he said.

Kira Wegner-Clemens

Wegner-Clemens, a Jones College senior from Cary, N.C., will study Russian in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.

Wegner-Clemens’ passion for the Russian language began when she spent a summer during high school studying Russian and living with a host family in a small city outside of St. Petersburg.

“I was interested in Russian history at the time, but loved the experience and came back more generally interested in the culture and language,” Wegner-Clemens said. “I picked it up again when I got to Rice and have taken a Russian class every semester since. They’ve all been great, and I’ve really learned a lot.”

Jonas Wittke

Wegner-Clemens will take language classes at Lobachevsky State University.

“I’m hoping to improve my speaking skills because that’s the most difficult thing to practice living in the U.S. and not having to use the language every day,” she said.

Jonas Wittke, a graduate student in linguistics, will study Indonesian in Malang, Indonesia.