Zena Almeida-Warwin ’28 and Sarah Owosina ’29 lived abroad this summer to boost their intercultural competencies and reinforce their academic priorities as participants in the U.S. Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program.
The highly competitive eight-week CLS fellowship fully funds intensive, immersive instruction in host countries for American students interested in globally focused careers.
The Pomona College students were among the more than 500 undergraduate and graduate students to accept the award this year.
Almeida-Warwin and Owosina represented the College—and the United States—in Brazil and South Korea, respectively, and say their experiences overseas helped hone their language skills as they plot their career paths.
Returning to Brazil moves research forward
A Critical Language Scholar in 2025, Almeida-Warwin says her first summer in Rio de Janeiro reinforced her connection to Brazil and deepened her commitment to Brazilian studies, inspiring her return in 2026.
While abroad last year, the New Yorker met peers whose passion for their fields of study encouraged her to pursue careers in the humanities and social sciences.
“My first experience [as a Critical Language Scholar] revealed many of my academic interests, career prospects and goals for who I wanted to become as a scholar and young professional,” she says.
An anthropology and English double major, Almeida-Warwin used this summer to examine the social mechanisms underlying Rio’s more elite spaces, an effort that led her to more diverse, less touristic corners of the city.
Visits to the historic portside neighborhood of Gamboa, where her godmother leads the community arts organization Companhia de Mistérios e Novidades; a soup kitchen in Rio’s lesser-resourced Zona Norte; and an urban terreiro to witness Candomblé, the Afro-Brazilian Yoruba tradition, proved equally “eye-opening and impactful,” she says.
In Brazil concurrently for her Summer Undergraduate Research Project (SURP), Almeida-Warwin conducted interviews in Portuguese with university students, community leaders and scholars alike.
“There’s something really special about being able to prioritize language and cultural immersion without considering credits, your major or whatever lens you’re approaching academics through at home,” she says. “Allotting yourself a summer to experience a place, pushing yourself to engage with what is likely a foreign culture and community, and meeting some incredible people is so unique and important.”
Almeida-Warwin says being a Critical Language Scholar again this year played a fundamental role in her decision to pursue a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology.
“My two summers with the scholarship have been two of the most condensed periods of growth in my lifetime,” she adds. “It’s an experience students should take advantage of, should they get the chance.”
From local language immersion to global impact
This summer marked the third time in three years Owosina, an international relations major from Jupiter, Florida, spent an extended amount of time studying Korean abroad through the State Department.
Once in high school and once during a gap year before starting at Pomona, Owosina immersed herself in Korean culture. Her latest trip to South Korea—this time as a Critical Language Scholar—reinforced her decision to pursue international relations.
“I love connecting with other people,” she says, “and from that, I want to go into foreign service and more specifically public diplomacy so I can connect with people on a person-to-person basis.”
Based in Busan, South Korea, Owosina and a cohort of other students interspersed cultural activities among language classes at Pusan National University.
The group toured Haedong Yonggungsa Temple and Daereungwon, and in her free time, Owosina used public transportation to visit such sites as Hwangnyeongsan Observatory and Ahopsan Forest on her own.
“What I liked about Busan,” she says of South Korea’s second-most populous city, “was it felt slower [than Seoul], but you still had the lively energy. I felt I could feel more of the culture and tradition there.”
Owosina returned to South Korea this summer intent on improving her fluency, and as advanced as her CLS courses were, she says they helped her grow increasingly comfortable speaking to locals in their native language.
“One of the most rewarding things when you’re learning a language is being able to have more casual conversations with people,” she says. “CLS is such a great program because the skills you gain from this program expand beyond the language. The experience was transformative and worth doing for anyone that’s interested.”