Azerbaijan might not be a familiar country to many Americans aside from, perhaps, political junkies and geography buffs, but for Oklahoma State students it will soon feel much closer.
People on the outside looking in often misunderstand Appalachia’s cultural ways and traditions. Those same attitudes are often leveled at people from the Middle East. The new student podcast Sandstone, by Clara Haizlett, seeks to introduce people from both cultures, with the aim of developing greater understanding between them.
Clara Haizlett (Arabic 2017) received funding through the Alumni Development Fund to start a podcast project called the “Sandstone Podcast,” which is designed to provide an accessible educational source of information about the Middle East for her fellow West Virginians and which explores connections between those living in Appalachia and the Arab world.
In 2019, Macalester Portuguese minor Gloria Odoemelam was awarded the highly competitive Critical Language Scholarship to study Portuguese in Brazil. Now Portuguese professor Ernesto Ortiz-Díaz is looking to build on his program's successes.
Former Olympian and CLS Alumna Siobhan Heekin-Canedy (Russian 2016) writes about the importance of sports diplomacy in the context of the Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea.
Marymount University alumna Stephanie Downing spent the summer studying Hindi in Jaipur, India, as an awardee of the 2019 U.S. Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) program.