USC senior awarded scholarship to study in Taiwan

Upper St. Clair High School senior Tyler Besselman was recently awarded a National Security Language Initiative for Youth scholarship for 2017-18. Tyler will study at the Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, from August 2017 through June 2018.

While in Taiwan, Tyler will reside with a Taiwanese host family and will participate in 14 hours of intensive Mandarin Chinese instruction per week. In addition, he will receive one-on-one Chinese tutoring, four hours of elective university courses as well as monthly cultural activities and excursions.

According to the program’s website, “the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, provides merit-based scholarships for eligible high school students and recent high school graduates to learn less commonly taught languages in summer and academic-year overseas immersion programs.”

Scholarships are available annually to students throughout the United States who have an interest in intensively studying Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Persian or Russian overseas.

The goals of the NSLI-Y program include sparking a life-long interest in foreign languages and cultures, and developing a corps of young Americans with the linguistic skills and cultural knowledge to promote international dialogue and support American engagement abroad.

For more information, visit www.nsliforyouth.org.