Kent State University, along with partners Bowling Green State University, Oberlin College, University of Akron and the Summit County Educational Service Center, have received an Ohio Board of Regents grant for $267,600 to offer a second Regents Foreign Language Academy for high school students during summer 2008. This grant builds on the foundation of the very successful 2007 Regents Foreign Language Academy that took place at Kent State last summer.

Kent State University also received an $88,000 supplemental grant from the National Foreign Language Center STARTALK program to increase the size of the 2008 Academy cohorts in Arabic and Chinese and to add a cohort to study Hindi. The Summit County Educational Service Center, looking to attract high school students in its service area into Arabic and Chinese, also has committed nearly $93,000 of its grant funding to the academy partnership, while Kent State’s Office of the Provost has committed $26,000 in matching funds to ensure the continued success of the Academy.

The academy will offer nearly 70 students, who will be high school juniors or seniors during the 2008-2009 academic year, the opportunity to study a foreign language—Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, or Russian—for four semester hours of college credit. As part of the academy, students will participate in a four-week residential summer language immersion experience at Kent State, scheduled from June 29 to July 26, 2008. While living in a language house, students will attend daily classes followed by evening immersion experiences where they will be exposed to films, games, music, cuisine and conversation using the foreign language as well as presentations by professionals who use foreign languages in their careers. In addition, summer academy students will participate in monthly mini-immersion sessions on Saturdays during the following school year to earn an additional four credits, which will satisfy high school language requirements and count toward fulfilling college language requirements at Ohio universities. This year, alumni from the 2007 Regents Foreign Language Academy will serve as peer mentors.

The academy is free for students; tuition, room, board, admission fees and textbooks will be provided. Beyond earning college and high school language credits, students also can earn a summer stipend.

For more information, call 330-672-2150 or send e-mail to Brian Baer, director of the academy and Kent State associate professor of Russian, at bbaer@kent.edu, or Gregory Shreve, chair of modern and classical language studies, at gshreve@kent.edu.