Augustana University student Adam Brachman ‘28 has received the 2026 Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program Award, which provides American college and university students with the opportunity to study cultures and languages essential to U.S. global engagement. The media production & entrepreneurship and music double major will spend eight weeks in Okayama, Japan, intensively studying the Japanese language and culture.
“You spend hours trying as hard as you can to learn, only to never use it in real life. And then, you win something like this, and you’re just like, ‘Oh, it actually did matter. All of my hard work actually paid off,’” Brachman said.
Each summer, CLS Program undergraduate and graduate recipients enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities spend up to 10 weeks studying one of nine languages at a study-abroad institute. The program promotes essential intercultural fluency and rapid language gains in areas that are critical to U.S. economic survival and national security.
Finalists receive full funding, including transportation, tuition, housing and a stipend they can use to engage in the local area as part of their scholarship. When they return home, they bring with them two semesters of college credit in their chosen language, as well as first-hand experience in a country where that language is spoken.
The program is highly competitive. Approximately 315 students were chosen for the opportunity to study critical languages through the overseas CLS Program and its virtual alternative, CLS Spark. Recipients were selected from a pool of more than 4,500 applicants from 165 higher education institutions across the U.S.
Last year, after speaking with Director of Study Away Erin Kane, Brachman applied and began learning Japanese through CLS Spark to meet the 2-year requirement for the overseas program. Brachman said the 2-month online program better prepared him for the larger program this year.
“At the end of the program, we did an oral proficiency interview again, and I scored intermediate mid, which means I jumped two levels on the oral proficiency exam,” he explained. “That’s a lot for eight weeks, which means CLS Spark works!”
This year, Brachman said he relied on support from those around him, including Joseph Patteson, associate professor of Spanish. Without help, Brachman explained that he wouldn’t have made it through the wait to hear back about who had been chosen for the program.
“I talked to him (Patteson) all the time throughout my application process and during the waiting period, which is honestly the worst part,” he said. “You're just hoping, but you don’t actually know if you got it until March.”
At first, Brachman said it was hard to stay positive in the long wait, but realized all he needed to do was remain hopeful. Winning the scholarship was more rewarding than he had imagined.
“When I first applied to CLS, I was pretty pessimistic about it because it’s a very competitive program. I was thinking, ‘I’m going to be an alternate or I’m not going to win at all,’” he said. “And then, I realized that I’d already applied and written the essay — there was nothing I could do from there, so I just kept studying in the hopes that if I did win, my studies would pay off. When I did win, I just studied even harder!”
However, for Brachman, CLS is about more than just learning a new language and culture — it provides an opportunity to better understand music in different cultures.
“I like learning about the different types of music that I haven’t encountered before, and I’ve been really impressed with Japanese music recently — I think there’s a lot I can learn from it,” he said. “Hopefully CLS in Japan will give me the opportunity and language skills that I need to study with Japanese professors and musicians in order to make music.”
And to Brachman, learning Japanese is only the beginning of his broader exploration of music and his relationships with others.
“Learning something new about someone who speaks only Japanese sounds the most exciting to me,” he explained. “So I’ll be able to learn more about people, and I think it’ll make me a better person in general.”
The CLS Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, funded by the U.S. Government and administered by American Councils for International Education. To learn more about the CLS Program, contact Drs. Jennapher Lunde Seefeldt, Joseph Patteson or David O’Hara.