Six language instructors from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Turkey and Bangladesh are at UGA under the auspices of the Fulbright Program and the Institute of International Education in New York.
“They are here to teach classes in six different languages that the federal government deems to be critical for national security: Pashto, Urdu, Persian, Indonesian, Turkish and Bengali,” said Alan Godlas, professor of religion in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
In addition to funding the classes, the Foreign Language Teaching Assistant Program, sponsored by Fulbright and IIE, handpicked these six native speakers, all of whom are experienced instructors in their own languages and also fluent in English. The program also arranged their transportation from their countries to UGA.
The instructors, country and the language they teach are: Muazzam Sharif, Pakistan, for Pashto; Maryam Shaheen, Pakistan, for Urdu; Emrah Ozcan, Turkey, for Turkish; Parviz Hussaini, Afghanistan, for Persian; Difi Apriyanti, Indonesia, for Indonesian; and Mahmudul Haque, Bangladesh, for Bengali.
Although UGA already offers four years of courses leading to an Arabic major, interested students can take two years of classes in these additional languages, thereby fulfilling their language requirements, according to Godlas. Even after having taken only one year of these languages, undergraduates will be in a position to obtain federally funded scholarships for subsequent study abroad in countries where these languages are spoken, he added.
Also, graduate students taking these languages in addition to their own field of study can receive federal scholarships for language study at UGA. For more information, see the Boren NSEP scholarship program at www.borenawards.org/.
For questions about Boren and other scholarships, contact the UGA representative, Jessica Hunt, at (706) 542-6206 or jhunt@uga.edu. Students interested in enrolling in language classes should contact Godlas, co-director of the UGA Arabic major, at godlas@uga.edu. He is coordinating instruction in these languages at UGA.