INDIANOLA — In the history of the Fulbright Program, 82 Fulbright scholars have gone on to receive the Pulitzer Prize, 54 have received a Nobel Prize, 33 have served as head of state or government, 10 have been elected to U.S. Congress, and one served as secretary general of the United Nations.

Who knows where we may find Sarah Mills of Indianola in the future.

Mills, a senior majoring in Russian studies at Lewis & Clark College, was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to teach for one year in Russia. The award was announced on April 15.

The Fulbright Program was founded by Sen. William J. Fulbright in 1946, and is a program of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Each year, 8,000 Fulbright scholars undertake graduate study, advanced research, university lecturing, and classroom teaching in other countries, or are selected from other countries to study or teach here.

The program was established after World War II to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge, and skills.

In 2014, Mills was awarded a Critical Language Scholarship to support a summer of study in Russia.

“I applied for this program because I wanted to find any way possible to continue studying Russian over the summer,” she said on the Lewis & Clark website in 2014. “I was originally intending to try and find financial aid and just take Russian classes at some university in the U.S., but then I found out about this scholarship and I thought I would give it a shot. I am very excited to be in such an intense academic environment while getting experience speaking Russian in everyday life.”

The Critical Language Scholarship is a program funded by the U.S. State Department that supports undergraduate and graduate studies in 13 critical foreign languages. The program provides fully funded, group-based intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences for seven to 10 weeks in the country of the language.

In 2013, Mills was one of four Lewis & Clark students to win the National Post-Secondary Russian Essay-Writing Contest. The contest is run by the American Council for the Teachers of Russian.

Mills was one of 1,000 students from more than 50 colleges and universities to compete in the 2013 contest. Her essay, written in Russian, was sent to Russia and judged by a panel of experts on creativity as well as elegance and accuracy of expression.