ROCK HILL, SOUTH CAROLINA – Winthrop University senior Levi Becht will spend two months this summer in Japan on a U.S. Department of State scholarship to work on his language skills.
Based in Okayama in western Japan, Becht will spend four hours a day during the week learning Japanese at the University of Okayama and another hour speaking with a local language partner. This won’t be his first visit to Japan – the York, South Carolina, resident traveled there in 2023 and 2024 as a tourist and is already somewhat proficient in the language.
Known as the Critical Language Scholarship Program, the immersion program provides the equivalent of one full academic year of language study in just eight weeks. It will pay for Becht’s travel expenses and lodging and will offer him a stipend for meals and incidentals.
The federal government sends young Americans in undergraduate or graduate schools to different countries to boost American proficiency in 15 foreign languages critical to national security and economic prosperity.
Becht, a philosophy and religion major who transferred from York Technical College, left for Japan on June 7 and will return on Aug. 8. He expects to travel on weekends to see the country, particularly Mount Daisen, the tallest mountain in the Chūgoku region and an early center of Shinto and Buddhist practice, and Shikoku, the smallest and least populated of Japan's four main islands.
Once Becht graduates in December, he hopes to go to graduate school to study philosophy or Japanese studies. He finds Shinto, Japan’s indigenous, nature-based spirituality, fascinating.
For more information, contact Judy Longshaw, news and media services manager, at longshawj@winthrop.edu.
