Three Texas State students selected for Critical Language Scholarship, including Japanese minor

June 4, 2024

Dear all,

We are pleased to announce that the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program has selected three Texas State students as awardees for its 2024 summer language programs. The CLS Program is a fully-funded summer overseas language and cultural immersion program for American undergraduate and graduate students, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Through the CLS Program, the State Department seeks to build a cadre of Americans who speak one of thirteen languages critical to our national security, economic prosperity, and engagement with the world. CLS Spark is a virtual initiative of the CLS Program that is open only to undergraduate students and supports the virtual study of Arabic, Chinese, or Russian during online summer programs.

Although CLS has not released final award statistics for this year's competition, the CLS Program routinely receives approximately 5,000 applications annually and has a selection rate of less than 10% for the Critical Language Scholarship. In fact, two of this year's awardees were initially selected as alternates and were promoted to finalists (recipients).

The 2024 awardees for these highly competitive programs are listed below:

Ethan Guinn   
Honors student, double major in religious studies and history; minor in Japanese   
Russian — CLS Spark   
Ethan will spend approximately 8 weeks in summer 2024 learning Russian through online classes and activities facilitated by native speakers at a CLS partner institution abroad.  
CLS Campus Advisor: Cathlin Noonan, IDEA Center, Honors College

Anastasia Gumatay  
master’s student, social work  
Hindi — Critical Language Scholarship  
A former Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines and Paul D. Coverdell Fellowship recipient, Anastasia will study Hindi in Jaipur, India, through the American Institute of Indian Studies from June 12-August 10, 2024.  
CLS Campus Advisor: Andrea Hilkovitz, The Graduate College

Dustin Sanchez
doctoral student, geography
Turkish — Critical Language Scholarship
A veteran and Fulbright U.S. Student Program grantee to Kosovo in 2022-2023, Dustin will study Turkish in Ankara, Turkey, through the Ankara University TÖMER Institute from June 20-August 17, 2024.
CLS Campus Advisor: Brian Smith, The Graduate College

This year's class ties last year's for the largest number of recipients from Texas State University. Applicants were supported by an expanded fellowship advising team that now includes Cathlin Noonan in the IDEA Center and Honors College, who advises undergraduate applicants for this and other awards in coordination with The Graduate College's external funding coordinators.

Notably, Ethan is TXST's first-ever recipient of the CLS Spark award, which is a relatively new program that was piloted in 2022-2023. This is also the first year that two TXST graduate students have been awarded in the same year. (Anastasia and Dustin are the fifth and sixth graduate students to receive the Critical Language Scholarship.) Finally, Ethan is the first recipient for Russian, and Anastasia is the first recipient for Hindi.

We have included headshots of the awardees for distribution.

Cathlin Noonan (ideafellow@txstate.edu) and Drs. Andrea Hilkovitz and Brian Smith (gcexternalfunds@txstate.edu) are happy to answer any media-related follow-up questions.

Best,  

Dr. Andrea Golato and Dr. Heather Galloway