East Asian Studies major selected for Critical Language Scholarship

University of New Mexico junior Randee Brandt, an East Asian Studies major, will spend the summer in New Taipei City, Taiwan taking classes at Tamkang University after receiving a Critical Language Scholarship, a program sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

The CLS program offers scholarships in nine languages, including Mandarin Chinese, and are extremely competitive, with approximately 315 students selected for the 2026 program from a pool of over 4,500 applicants. The program requires one year of prior study in Chinese to be considered.

Brandt, who has a concentration in Chinese Language, credits some time spent away from the classroom with helping him to find his academic interest.

"I started out in computer science, and I hated it, so I dropped out and I moved to Japan for a couple of years," Brandt said. "I really liked talking to people from a different culture, learning languages, so when I came back, I picked the major that was as similar to that as possible."

Brandt's program will last for two months, during which he will stay with a host family and be able to spend his free time exploring New Taipei City. Though with the program featuring a year's worth of Mandarin language courses packed into eight weeks, Brandt doesn't expect he'll have much free time.

"I'll just be studying a lot," Brandt said. "I think they have other opportunities planned for us to visit historical landmarks and things like that, but I think it's mostly going to be time spent in the classroom. But I'm really excited, I think it will be really fun."

Professor Peng Yu, who is the principal lecturer of Chinese at UNM, told Brandt about the CLS scholarship and encouraged him to apply.

"(Brandt) also studies Japanese language and culture," Yu said. My Japanese colleagues and I agree that Randee is smart and diligent. I encouraged him to apply for the CLS scholarship because I did believe he was a perfect candidate for this program, and also his Chinese proficiency would be improving further if he could get immersion learning experience overseas."

Brandt said he views this opportunity as a chance to increase his comfort with the language thanks to learning and living in a more immersive environment.

"I'm at a point in learning Chinese where I know a decent amount, but it's hard to use it," Brandt said. "Someone will say something and it will take me a couple of seconds to translate it in my head, think about what I want to say and translate it into Chinese, so I'm hoping that being in a more immersive environment helps with that."

The CLS program is just one of the scholarship options available to language majors, the Boren Awards, Gilman and Fulbright programs representing some of the other options. Students interested in learning more about these awards can contact the Global Education Office or the Center for Academic Excellence & Leadership development to learn more.

"I think sometimes it can be hard to know what do with language degrees, so hopefully this helps show other language majors some of the options that are out there," Brandt said.