Athens, Ga. – Recent University of Georgia graduate Lee Moore has been awarded a two-year Language Flagship Fellowship to study Mandarin in China from the U.S. Department of Defense’s National Security Education Program. Moore received his master’s degree in comparative literature in May and his bachelor’s degree from UGA in comparative literature last year.
Moore, who is from Jonesboro and graduated from Lovejoy High School, will spend one year at Brigham Young University in Utah for intensive advanced language training in Mandarin. Then he will travel to China for a year, studying at Nanjing University and completing an internship.
“I’m really excited to get back to studying Chinese in an intensive program like the National Flagship Language Program,” said Moore, who spent his senior year in China as a 2006 recipient of the NSEP David L. Boren Undergraduate Scholarship. “I’m even more excited to get back to China. I miss the country and its gritty vivacity.”
The National Security Education Program (NSEP) runs the National Flagship Language Program, which began in 2002 as an initiative to address the urgent need for students of all disciplines to master languages deemed critical to national security. NSEP offers a limited number of fellowships through the Institute of International Education to qualified U.S. students who participate in one of the Flagship Programs that have been developed at several U.S. colleges and universities for advanced training in languages such as Arabic and Russian.
Moore’s fellowship will cover tuition, living expenses, and funding for travel and health insurance while he is in the program. In return, he must work for the Department of Defense, State or Homeland Security or in the intelligence community for two and a half years after finishing his program.
While an undergraduate at UGA, Moore was a member of the Honors Program and received the Courts International Scholarship to study Japanese in Hakodate, Japan during the summer of 2005. He also was involved with Young Democrats, the UGA chapter of the Roosevelt Institution and the Georgia-China Alliance, a non-profit organization that promotes educational and cultural exchanges and commerce between Georgia and China.
“I’m not at all surprised that Lee has received the NSEP Flagship Fellowship to return to China and Chinese studies,” said David S. Williams, director of UGA’s Honors Program. “His intellect, focus and dedication are obvious. He richly deserves all the good things coming his way, and we wish him continued success.”
Moore says that spending his senior year in China helped prepare him for this advanced training, since he only had two years of the language before that. Moore also credits his participation in the Security Leadership Program through UGA’s Center for International Trade and Security. He co-authored an article about the impact of China’s possible admittance into the G-8 for the center’s nonproliferation journal. He says all these experiences influenced his career choice of working for the federal government, focusing on nonproliferation and China.
Throughout his college career, faculty mentor Sylvia Hutchinson has followed Moore’s progress and says she was happy to hear about his latest achievement. “Lee introduced himself to me as a freshman and we have been friends ever since,” said Hutchinson, professor emerita of higher education and reading education at UGA. “He is an incredible young scholar and his email journals during his many international trips are treasures. He is a bright, witty and hard-working young man and I am very proud of his fine accomplishments and look forward to many more in the future.”
For more information about UGA’s Honors Program, see http://www.uga.edu/honors.
For more information about the NSEP National Flagship Language Program, see http://www.iie.org/programs/nsep/flagship.