Critical Languages Institute Welcomes the 2025 Cohort

As the Critical Languages Institute (CLI) at Arizona State University’s Melikian Center celebrates over 30 years of offering intensive summer language programs, this year’s cohort is academically ambitious with representatives from 84 different universities across the United States and abroad, with interests ranging from material science and engineering to neuroscience and anthropology. Participants include previous recipients of the Boren Award, Critical Languages Scholarship, National Merit Scholarship and a host of university specific academic awards. Additionally, finalists for Fulbright English Teaching Assistant and Boren Awards for 2025-2026 are also among the group indicating this year's cohort's academic excellence and ambition. Over 125 learners are enrolled in a CLI program, and sixty to travel to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; Daugavpils, Latvia; Yerevan, Armenia; Tashkent, Uzbekistan; Warsaw, Poland; and Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Learners will have the opportunity to attend 1^st-Year Critical Languages Institute programs in an online or online plus abroad format in Albanian, Armenian, BCMS (Bosnian-Croatian- Montenegrin-Serbian), Kazakh, Macedonian, Persian, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Uzbek. Upper division programs take place abroad. Although the popularity of foreign language education in the U.S. has seen a large decline, CLI has seen an increase in language enrollments with a wider variety of interest across CLI languages.

CLI’s programming outside of the classroom will focus on building future global leaders through motivating cultural and self-awareness. Dr. Jamie Edmonds (Dr. J) is running a pilot study of all CLI programs using the Belief, Events, and Values Inventory to see how participants change throughout their program. The study focuses on how participants’ global resonance, self-awareness, and sociocultural openness changes as a result of their CLI experience. Additional opportunities for professional development, including how to leverage language learning for future opportunities, are also a part of the CLI experience this year.  

CLI is proud to welcome Zhuldyz Zhumashova to the CLI faculty this summer, who will be teaching 1^st-Year Kazakh. She received the National Award for Outstanding Teacher of Kazakhstan in 2022 and is currently pursuing a PhD in Cultural Anthropology at Texas A&M. Her research focuses on the integration experience of ethnic Kazakhs who have migrated from Uzbekistan, China, or Mongolia to Kazakhstan.

Additionally, CLI has launched a new Russian program in Daugavpils, Latvia in collaboration with Learn Russian in the European Union and Daugavpils University. While in Daugavpils, students have the opportunity to learn Russian at third-year and above levels, as well as visit the “Slutišķi” Exhibition at the Old Believers Ethnographic Site, the Rundāle Palace, and many other cultural highlights. Participants will also celebrate traditional Latvian Līgo (summer solstice) with their host families.

The 2025 CLI cohort contains students enrolled in community colleges, large public universities, Ivy League universities, high schools, international graduate programs, and continuing education ranging in ages from 16 to 60. CLI reaches beyond elite educational silos, majors, and backgrounds. As CLI continues to bridge academic, linguistic, and geographic divides, it is poised to not only train the next generation of global professionals but to do so in a way that supports and tracks participant transformation.