Global citizen: UTC’s Emma Roy awarded Boren Scholarship

Emma Roy was one of the UTC scholarship recipients celebrated at the annual Scholarship Luncheon on Friday, April 5. Photo by Angela Foster.

Last summer, Emma Roy—a secondary education: political science major and Brock Scholar in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Honors College—spent two months speaking only Chinese in an immersive language program at National Cheng Kung University in Tainan, Taiwan.

As one of 23 U.S. students selected for the prestigious Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Chinese Program—an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs—Roy and her cohort were required to speak Chinese in all of the National Cheng Kung University classrooms and everywhere on campus. “Of course, when you left campus,” she said of the experience, “you were on your own to make your own decisions, but you can’t get around Taiwan without knowing Chinese.”

It turns out that two months was just the start.

Roy, currently completing her junior year at UTC, has been selected for the prestigious David L. Boren Scholarship, an initiative of the Defense Language and National Security Education Office, which is part of the U.S. Department of Defense.

Beginning in mid-September, Roy will spend 25 weeks—the equivalent of an academic year—at National Taiwan University as part of the International Chinese Language Program (ICLP).

The Boren program aims to provide funding and opportunities for U.S. undergraduate and graduate students by producing a cadre of linguistically adept people with a thorough awareness of the political, economic and social dynamics of nations that are significant to world affairs, encouraging students to fully immerse themselves in the language and culture of these regions.

“The Boren is the premier undergraduate scholarship focused on national security in the United States,” said Dr. Trey Straussberger, director of the UTC Office of National Scholarships. “It funds students who go abroad for either a summer or a semester—in Emma’s case, the whole academic year—in order to learn what the federal government calls a critical language. These are languages that are of special interest and special need to the federal government.

“Given the United States’ growing interest in the Indo-Pacific region,” he continued, learning Mandarin Chinese “is of high demand. There’s a large need for these types of language speakers.”

Roy, who spent last fall at the University of Brighton in England following her summer CLS experience, said she is looking forward to her next overseas learning experience.

“I applied for the Boren when I returned to UTC after studying abroad in England,” she said. “I knew I wanted to become fluent in Chinese. The ICLP is an intense immersion course in Mandarin, and you sign a language pledge as well.”

Roy, a native of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, graduated from The Webb School—a college preparatory school in Bell Buckle, Tennessee—in 2021. This semester, she is a student research fellow for UC Foundation Professor of Medical Anthropology Zibin Guo in the Department of Social, Cultural, and Justice Studies and a tutor at DuPont Elementary School in Chattanooga.

A unique aspect of the Boren Scholarship is that, upon completion of the program and college graduation, recipients are expected to fulfill a service requirement by working for a federal agency or department with national security responsibilities.

Roy said her post-Boren plan is to return to UTC for the fall 2025 semester and graduate in May 2026. From there, she will spend at least one year working as a foreign service officer for the U.S. Department of State.

“When I applied, I put all of my effort into that application; I really wanted this,” she said. “I had a discussion with my parents and they said, ‘If you get this, you are going to have to think your life is going to change; it’s basically planned out for the next three years,’ but it’s worth it.

“There are so many jobs and so many opportunities, and I’ll definitely be in a position to meet a broad network of people in foreign service. After the CLS, I knew I wanted a foreign service affairs career.”

According to its website, Boren Scholars come from diverse backgrounds and perspectives and “are equipped with the intellectual curiosity and academic training to solve our nation’s complex, global problems. They are the public sector’s next generation of influencers and innovators.”

The scholarship covers tuition, travel, living expenses and other educational expenditures related to the study abroad experience.

Roy is the first UTC student to land the Boren Scholarship in recent years.

“I’m thrilled that there’s a Boren recipient at UTC because it not only speaks to the kind of exceptional character of our students academically but also their dedication to public service,” Straussberger said.