About

Project GO, a nationwide initiative of the National Security Education Program, seeks to strengthen future military officers’ competence in critical world languages. Boston University has been part of Project GO since 2009. In the current phase of the project, the principal language programs supported by Project GO-BU are Arabic, Chinese, the West African language Hausa (spoken in the Niger-Nigeria region), Korean, Russian, and Turkish.

During the academic year, Project GO-BU provides peer tutoring and cultural enrichment for ROTC students currently enrolled in the study of a critical language at BU. Over the summer, Project GO-BU provides fellowships covering a majority of necessary expenses for successful ROTC applicants to begin the study of a critical language at BU, and additional fellowships for other ROTC students to study abroad in Morocco and China in the summer. (Summer fellowships are open to ROTC students from around the US.) The grant includes additional support for developing improved materials for instruction and assessment of students’ language competence and a variety of cultural and informational programs at BU.

Twelve critical languages and 23 languages overall are regularly taught at BU. Few universities in the US offer regular instruction in so many languages and support this instruction, as BU does, with full-time continuing faculty members.

Project GO-BU is an initiative funded by $810,000 in grants awarded to BU’s Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature (MLCL) by the U.S. Department of Defense. The initial grant was awarded in 2009 and renewed in 2011. Professor William Waters, Chair of Boston University’s Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature, wrote the grant and serves as Executive Director of Project GO-BU. Project GO-BU is administered and coordinated by Alexandra McCullough.