Contact: Sammy McDavid
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A Mississippi State senior from Hot Springs, Ark., is a recent selection for a federally sponsored summer program involving advanced study of the Russian language.
William A. Dickerson is among approximately 575 U.S. undergraduate and graduate university students receiving the U.S. State Department's 2011 Critical Language Scholarships.
A spring semester President's List Scholar and the son of Page Dickerson, he is a mathematics major also taking upper-level courses in Russian while at MSU.
Dickerson will be spending eight weeks in Ufa, Russia, the capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan, where he will attend Bashkir State Pedagogical University while living with a host family. His intensive language instruction and structured cultural experiences will be fully funded by the department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
"This is a unique opportunity to develop my fluency in Russian language and familiarity with Russian culture," Dickerson said. "My experiences with the Russian language program at MSU have prepared me to find a career in math or computer science that allows me to communicate in Russian regularly."
This will not be Dickerson's first experience in the European nation, having previously traveled to the Ural Mountains on two occasions with family and friends.
He and others selected for the training were among more than 5,200 applying this year for a program designed to expand the number of Americans with a mastery of languages deemed critical by the State Department.
Participants are expected to continue study beyond the multi-country summer institutes and regularly apply their new language skills in future professional careers.
For more on the CLS Russian program, telephone 202-833-7522 or visit www.clscholarship.org and http://exchanges.state.gov.