Khalea Johnson receives Gilman scholarships to study abroad in Taiwan

JANS – Khalea Johnson discovered her love of foreign cultures by playing a video game. Super Mario Bros. Wii, to be exact.

There was something about being immersed in the fictional multiplayer universe that appealed to the Jackson native.

“As a kid, I was first introduced to different cultures through that game,” said Johnson, a senior foreign language and international trade major at Mississippi College. “I fell in love with the characters and got interested in who created it.

“I discovered it was a Japanese man. So, I went down a rabbit hole and fell in love with Japanese culture.”

When she reached high school, Johnson had an opportunity to study another Asian language: Mandarin Chinese. She started gravitating toward Chinese culture.

“Since then, I’ve wanted to learn more languages,” she said. “It’s how they sound to me – I find them really cool. It’s also interesting to find out how different people live and to understand how they see life.”

Her interest in Mandarin Chinese and her talent for picking up languages has helped her earn two prestigious national awards through the U.S. Department of State’s Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program: a $5,000 maximum award for the Gilman-Taiwan Scholarship, and, because she is studying Chinese, a language the U.S. State Department has deemed critical to national security, a $3,000 Critical Need Language Award.

They will help fund her final semester of college this spring at MC’s partner institution, Chung Yuan Christian University in Taiwan.

“These awards are highly competitive, and her selection is a remarkable achievement that reflects both her dedication and the strength of our language programs,” said Lingshan Song, MC instructor of Chinese, director of the Writing Center and faculty leader for MC’s partnership with CYCU.

Johnson credits her mother for helping stoke her passion for the Chinese language.

“When I was younger, my mom would encourage my sister and me to learn the hardest language out there,” she said.

She discovered MC through her high school Chinese teacher, Adam Jones, whose wife, Weng, once worked for the University.

“He told me about the Taiwan program at MC,” she said. “He highly recommended it because he knew the professors there were really great.”

A handful of years later, Johnson is on her way to Taiwan.