Global Impact
Student Success UGA enhances how students learn new languages through its immersive learning environments and flagship programs
Learning a new language opens doors to job opportunities, career advancements, and a deeper understanding of other cultures. The ability to connect with people across borders also enhances national security and unlocks global markets. But to reach world-ready fluency, students need to go beyond textbooks. To really speak the language and understand the world behind it, they need immersive, real-world experiences.
At the University of Georgia, students acquire stronger language skills through interactive learning programs that span disciplines and prepare them for communication across borders. UGA hosts flagship, immersive programs in Russian and Portuguese, offers language-specific communities on campus, and provides dozens of study abroad opportunities in host countries.
UGA is one of only four institutions in the country offering a Russian Language Flagship Program—and one of just two with a Portuguese Flagship. These highly selective programs are part of The Language Flagship, a federal initiative funded by the National Security Education Program (NSEP) within the U.S. Department of Defense. The goal of these flagships is to produce graduates with professional-level proficiency in languages deemed critical to national security and global competitiveness.
“Intercultural competency is a very important component of the program,” said Russian Flagship director Victoria Hasko, an associate professor of world language education in the College of Education’s department of language and literacy education. “One of the goals of the Language Flagship initiative is to prepare professionals who command deep knowledge of the country’s language, as well as their culture, customs, history and geopolitics, so they can serve as effective interlocutors both socially and professionally in their language of study.”
These rigorous programs create scholars and change-makers. UGA’s two most recent Rhodes Scholars, Mariah Cady (2024) and Natalie Navarrete (2023), were both students in the Russian Flagship Program. These students’ success underscores the power of UGA’s integrative model, combining foreign language education with experiential learning, global research, and high-level mentorship.
In 2025, UGA was also one of just five institutions nationally to receive the Simon Award for Comprehensive Internationalization. This award recognizes a university-wide commitment to global learning and engagement.
UGA offers instruction in over 30 languages and supports more than 100 faculty-led study abroad programs across six continents. These programs aren’t just travel. UGA structures opportunities for deep cultural exchange, advanced language acquisition, and real-world application. Students can spend a summer researching global health in Ghana, a semester studying politics in Oxford, or a year in Kazakhstan advancing their Russian fluency through one of the university’s nationally recognized Language Flagship programs.
You can’t learn a language in isolation, and at UGA, students don’t have to. They can study their chosen language by living in language-learning communities on campus. Through tight-knit cohorts, weekly conversation courses, organized activities, and cultural events, students form connections that accelerate their fluency and deepen cultural understanding.
Martin Kagel, associate provost for global engagement, believes equipping students with a global perspective is key to shaping their future success. “The experience of being in a culture that’s not your own teaches you invaluable lessons about cultural difference, about the diversity of peoples, about economic and educational disparities, how others see us, as Americans, and about how our actions here impacts people’s lives in other parts of the world,” said Kagel. “We want our students to be global citizens.”
Participants in UGA’s language communities not only earn academic credit and priority registration for language courses—they gain daily opportunities to practice, make mistakes, and grow in a way that traditional classrooms can’t replicate. It’s a uniquely immersive experience that transforms learners into confident, culturally fluent communicators.
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