Napier’s application was selected as one of the approximately 550 winners of the scholarship out of a pool of more than 5,000 applicants.
She applied to study Chinese through the program, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. The Critical Language Scholarship program is a fully funded summer overseas language and cultural immersion program for American undergraduate and graduate students with the goal of broadening the base of Americans studying and mastering critical languages.
Napier worked with Marshall University’s Office of National Scholarships throughout the application process.
Napier, who is planning to graduate in May 2017 with her second bachelor’s degree – she has a B.A. in Sociology and an M.A. in Theology – has visited China twice, once with a program that allowed her to teach English to Chinese students and again through a study abroad program at Tsinghua University.
Because the CLS program requires two years of previous Chinese-language study for applicants and Marshall does not currently offer Chinese, Napier utilized alternative methods including study abroad, independent study and private tutoring to reach an “intermediate” level of language preparation.
In addition to taking classes and her numerous extracurricular activities, Napier is also the full-time executive assistant for the Marshall University men’s basketball team. After graduation, she plans to pursue a master’s degree in International Studies at the Johns Hopkins Nanjing Center, which is located in China and requires both taking courses and writing a master’s thesis in Chinese.
She hopes to work as a diplomat for the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
The Critical Language Scholarship, designed to get more U.S. students studying critically designated languages, funds students’ travel, language instruction, lodging, food and cultural activities for one of 14 different languages. Some languages, like Chinese, require students to have studied them prior to entering the program, while others require no previous study.
For more information on the Critical Language Scholarship, visit www.clscholarship.org or contact Mallory Carpenter at the Office of National Scholarships at 304-696-2475 or at mallory.carpenter@marshall.edu.