While Oksana Hirchak’s family actively seeks shelter in Ukraine, she’s showing her support by teaching her fellow students at the University of Iowa her language. “I started the club because I wanted more people to know about Ukraine, about the culture, about the language,” she told KCRG. The idea came about after Russia invaded Ukraine. She realized the Center for Language and Culture Learning didn’t include information about Ukraine, so she wanted to offer her knowledge.

University of Iowa international studies and economics student Ryann Hubbart of Clinton, Iowa, has been awarded a 2022 U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) to study in Amman, Jordan, this summer for an intensive Arabic language program. The CLS scholarship is a program of the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and is intended to help broaden the base of Americans studying and mastering critical languages while building relationships between people of the United States and other countries.

The Center for Language and Culture Learning will be one of the hosts for the Midwest Association for Language Learning Technology on February 5th. Check out the conference program here.