NSA Grant Funds UTEP Summer Language Program
Last Updated on March 18, 2019 at 12:00 AM
Originally published March 18, 2019
By UC Staff
UTEP Communications
The National Security Agency awarded a $90,000 grant to The University of Texas at El Paso’s Maissa Khatib, Ph.D., clinical associate in the Women’s and Gender Studies program and director of the Department of Languages and Linguistics’ Arabic Program, for “Local to Global: STARTALK 2019.”
STARTALK is a free summer language program that will immerse 45 high school students in one of three foreign languages that El Paso public schools usually do not offer – Russian, Arabic and Portuguese. The camp will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, June 3-21 at UTEP. Organizers will provide daily snacks and lunch.
This year’s curriculum will involve language tied to health, science, technology, engineering, mathematics, geography and a few other fields, said Khatib, the program’s principal investigator.
“We’re hoping to build language skills through multidisciplinary connections,” Khatib said.
Instructors will use highly interactive and student-centered activities such as acting, cooking and dancing to enhance the learning of language and culture. The program also will take students on field trips and bring in guests who are native speakers of the languages offered by the program.
This will be STARTALK’s fifth year at UTEP and the fifth year that this program collaborates with the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland. The program’s goal is to interest more students in UTEP’s foreign language programs, which could lead to Study Abroad opportunities.
Interested students may register at utepstartalk.wordpress.com.