Students who received the prestigious awards, including the Critical Languages Scholarships, as well as Fulbright Scholarships.
This summer, Annie Renaud ’19 and Alex McGrath ’17 are living with host families in Russia, immersed in the culture, history and language.
They are recipients of Critical Language Scholarships given by the U.S. State Department, for undergraduates to study 14 languages deemed critical to national security and competitiveness.
Geneseo students have earned a total of six CLS awards in recent years — including Russian (Mark Simeone ’10), Arabic (Maria Sigalas ’13) and Turkish (James Kuras ’09 and Bob Viglietta ’12).
Also notable is that the students received the highly-competitive scholarships in Turkish, though Turkish isn’t taught on campus.
“More than 40 percent of our students study abroad and a large percentage are interested in becoming more proficient in a second or even third language as they embrace Geneseo’s emphasis on promoting ethical, local, and global citizenship,” says Michael Mills, director of national fellowships and scholarships at Geneseo. “They recognize that in order to be competitive in an ever more internationalized job environment, knowledge of other cultures and languages will set them apart. The college’s successes with CLS and other international scholarship and fellowship programs are testaments to the intelligence and talents of our students and the many dedicated faculty and staff members who support them.”
One such faculty member is Cynthia Klima, associate professor of languages and literatures, who has been instrumental in recruiting students to apply for the CLS, especially students who are interested in studying Central and Eastern European languages, including setting up independent study opportunities in languages offered on a limited basis at Geneseo or through other SUNY schools.
The CLS scholarships are among several high-profile awards and internships Geneseo students received this year:
• Two Geneseo seniors, a graduate student and an alumna have been awarded U.S. Fulbright Scholarships for 2017-2018 to participate in the English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Program. Another student was selected as an alternate to serve in Spain.
They will teach in Germany, Vietnam, the Netherlands and Malaysia. Another student was selected as an alternate for Spain.
It’s the largest Geneseo Fulbright class in history, surpassing the three winning and one alternate award in 2015.
Other Geneseo awards include:
• Robert Tumasian ’18, is attending Harvard University’s Summer Program in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.
•Shayne O’Brien ’17 is the first Geneseo undergraduate or graduate-student mathematics alumnus to earn a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, to attend the Computer/IS/Machine Learning graduate program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).