Jon Phoenix

Graduate student Jon Phoenix has been awarded a 2017 Critical Language Scholarship. Phoenix will travel to the American Institute of Indian Studies in Kolkata, India to study Bengali (also called Bangla), a language from the Indian subcontinent spoken by 250 million people. The Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program is a summer overseas language and cultural immersion program for American undergraduate and graduate students fully funded by the State Department. The program aims to broaden the base of Americans studying and mastering critical languages and build relationships between the people of the United States and other countries.

“I’ve always wanted to learn languages that are both useful and out-of-the-ordinary. So this is going to be a chance to test myself and see how quickly I can learn a foreign language. And speaking a language that few other Americans speak will be very useful professionally too.”

Collegiate experience

• Areas of Study:

  • Expects to graduate May 2019 from the College of Arts and Sciences with a PhD in applied sociology
  • Holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Northeastern University, Boston, 2012, and a master’s degree in sociology from University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2014.

Inspired By

Shout out to Professors Michal Kofman and Dave Roelfs for writing me stellar letters of recommendation.

Hometown information

• Hometown:

  Barbourville, Kentucky

• High school:

  Montgomery Blair High School, Silver Spring, Maryland