"My program requires that I demonstrate a foreign language proficiency by the time I complete my exams and advance to candidacy.听 In my research I may actually need more than one foreign language, and this can end up very costly.听 With the grant from the Center for Western Civilization language grant I was able to buy Fluenz software to learn German.听 Because I was a first-year out-of-state student, taking a summer class on campus was prohibitively expensive.听 The CWC worked with me and with the recommendations of my advisors, giving me more flexibility in what the grant could cover.听 The software option allowed me to accomplish my language training for significantly cheaper, and I was able to do it on my own time (which was important as I was working a full time job).听 It also gives me something I can go back to at any point in my career to brush up on my language skills.听 It might be a year or more until I get the opportunity to work with the German-language documents I need for my research, and now I have a solid resource to revisit to help me through those documents."
-Tiffany Beebe