George Mason University and Team Project Go just kicked off its second summer of programming, welcoming 23 cadets and midshipmen from across the country to participate in a seven-week, full-immersion language program on the Fairfax Campus. The program includes 150 credit hours in Chinese and Korean along with extensive intercultural communication training. Learn more about the program and the significant grant awarded to Mason’s Department of Modern and Classical Languages (MCL) to administer the initiative.
George Mason University’s Department of Modern and Classical Languages (MCL) has been awarded a significant grant from the Defense Language and National Security Education Office, U.S. Department of Defense, and the Institute of International Education (IIE) to administer Project Global Officer (Project GO), a major federal initiative to train select ROTC students from across the country in critical languages and intercultural communication skills.
Mason’s Project GO team is led by three MCL faculty members: principal investigator Nathaniel Greenberg, associate professor of Arabic; co-principal investigator Jihye Moon, assistant professor and Korean program coordinator; and co-principal investigator Karl Zhang, associate professor and Chinese program coordinator. The project has been developed in close coordination with Mason’s ROTC program, Global Education Office, and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Greenberg noted that Mason is particularly well suited for the program. “The idea was to use the diversity on campus and the linguistic richness of the northern Virginia area, to bring these cadets to campus and create a full immersion experience. They’re participating in community events, and cultural immersion activities in the D.C. area and northern Virginia, to parallel the overseas experience as much as possible.”
“There are many factors that are attractive,” agreed Moon, pointing out the proximity of the Fairfax Campus to “Koreatowns” in Centreville and Annandale, Virginia, as well as Washington D.C.’s Chinatown. She also highlighted Mason’s robust Korean studies program, which offers a minor in Korean as well as a bachelor of arts in foreign languages with a concentration in Korean.
The grant was awarded at $424,000 (for the 2021-22 academic year) and $409,000 (for 2022-23). The team hopes its unique domestic programming will become a national model for researching and teaching in the field of critical languages.
“What’s been interesting is to be part of a national security priority, coming at it from our humanities background as language teachers, as culture teachers and literature teachers,” said Greenberg.
June 02, 2023