Indiana University has been selected to receive a two-year federal grant for $481,630 to provide strategic language and culture training to undergraduate students in Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) programs, according to IU Media Relations.
The Institute of International Education (IIE), on behalf of the National Security Education Program of the U.S. Department of Defense, selected IU's ROTC Strategic Languages and Cultures Program to participate in this new initiative, which aims to improve the abilities of future military officers to speak and understand strategic languages and cultures. The languages covered by IU's program are Arabic, Russian, and the Central Asian languages Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Pashto, Tajik, Turkmen, Uyghur and Uzbek.
The co-principal investigators are Henry R. Cooper Jr., professor of Slavic languages and literatures, and Paul M. Foster Jr., director of the Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region and professor of Slavic languages and literatures.
Under IU's program, up to 25 ROTC cadets enrolled at IU or other universities will receive scholarships to study a strategic language and culture at IU's intensive summer language workshop, during which the cadets will complete a year's worth of training in eight-to-nine weeks.
After the summer workshop, IU's program will provide the ROTC cadets with additional funding to continue language and culture training in the 2007-08 academic year, either at IU, in language programs at their home universities, or through distance education courses provided by IU faculty.
IU's program, which will be directed by Gene Coyle, adjunct professor at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, provides innovative ways to help ROTC cadets shoulder the challenge of studying languages and cultures not typically taught in high schools. The program provides cadets with scholarships, intensive language training in small classes, individual tutoring, and activities designed to inform the cadets of the importance of strategic language and culture training for U.S. national security and foreign policy.
IU's new program was crafted by the Strategic Languages and Cultures Task Force, which President-elect Michael A. McRobbie created last fall to explore IU's opportunities to strengthen its connections with the U.S. Departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security on language and culture education, training and policy. As home to a record-10 international research centers that receive approximately $16 million in Title VI funding from the U.S. Department of Education, IU is well situated to partner with U.S. government agencies coping with challenges posed by strategic language and culture education.
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