Nine University of Pennsylvania students have won U.S. State Department 2013 Critical Language Scholarships to study languages during the summer:

·      Elliott Brooks, who will study Arabic in Morocco.

·      William Figueroa, who will study Persian in Tajikistan.

·      Susannah Fishman, who will study Azerbaijaini in Azerbaijan.

·      Marc Kelley, who will study Urdu in India.

·      Monika Bhagat-Kennedy, who will study Urdu in India.

·      Ariel Koren, who will study Chinese in China.

·      Jason Parad, who will study Korean in South Korea.

·      Angela Perfetti, who will study Arabic in Jordan.

·      Mimi Sheng, who will study Urdu in India.

 They are among approximately 600 U.S. undergraduate and graduate student scholarship recipients.  CLS participants will spend seven to ten weeks in intensive language institutes this summer in one of 13 countries.

The CLS Program is part of a U.S. government effort to dramatically expand the number of Americans studying and mastering critical foreign languages. More information is available at http://www.clscholarship.org/.