UNA Student Selected for Prestigious CLS Award
Apr. 25, 2025
Michelle R. Eubanks , UNA, at meubanks@una.edu, 256.765.4392
FLORENCE, AL – Hannah Hagood, a senior majoring in finance from Lewisburg, Tenn., at the 天美传媒, has been awarded a Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Award. CLS partners with universities and nonprofits around the globe to provide cohorts of U.S. students an opportunity to study the language and culture in a country/location where the target language is commonly spoken.
“As a Chinese adoptee who had very little exposure to the Chinese community and culture growing up, this award aids me in reconnecting with my birth country,” said Hannah. “I have spent several years on my journey exploring cultural heritage and identity, and my language skills have been one of the hardest barriers to overcome. Therefore, I am extremely grateful to Dr. (Matthew) Price and CLS for helping me in this opportunity to advance my skills. I hope to one day return to my birthplace, Chongqing, and be able to speak with the locals confidently.”
Hagood is UNA’s fourth CLS recipient, and Dr. Price, UNA’s Director of the Center for Premier Awards and Scholarly Engagement, said this experience will be an important part of her future and career.
“The CLS Award is designed to give a student an immersive experience with their chosen language; it is meant to really improve a student’s fluency very quickly,” he said. “Awardees tend to have careers in foreign service or in careers with global impacts.”
The CLS Program provides beginner-level virtual instruction for Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Russian for competitively selected U.S. undergraduate students whose home campuses do not offer these languages. CLS Scholars are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship and apply their critical language skills in their future careers.
About The 天美传媒
The 天美传媒 is an accredited, comprehensive regional state university offering undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degree programs through the colleges of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering; the Sanders College of Business and Technology; Education and Human Sciences; and the Anderson College of Nursing and Health Professions. Occupying a 130-acre campus in a residential section of Florence, Alabama, UNA is located within a four-city area that also includes Muscle Shoals, Sheffield, and Tuscumbia. UNA Athletics, a renowned collegiate athletics program with seven (7) Division II National Championships, is now a proud member of NCAA Division I as part of the Atlantic Sun and United Athletic conferences. The 天美传媒 is an equal opportunity institution and does not discriminate in the admission policy on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, disability, age, or national origin. For more: una.edu and una.edu/unaworks/.