Missouri Military Academy sophomore Charles Eckardt of Snoqualmie has received several honors that could send him around the world.

Eckardt was recently awarded a scholarship from the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) to participate in a Chinese language immersion program. If accepted, Eckardt will spend six weeks of his summer in Zhuhai, China living with a Chinese host family, speaking exclusively Mandarin, and taking a minimum of 120 hours of language classes.

NSLI-Y is part of a U.S. government initiative that prepares American citizens to be leaders in a global world.

“I am currently taking my second year of Chinese at MMA and just found something interesting in how fantastic and beautiful the language is,” said Eckardt.

It “is almost as though each character is a picture and deciphering it makes you think of the Chinese culture and how these characters came to be.”

Eckardt was selected as a 2015 Duke of York fellow, allowing him to attend The Duke of York’s Royal Military School in the UK.

Eckardt is also a recipient of The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Silver Medal, and a member of the MMA Delta Phi Academic Honor Society. He was part of the MMA 2015 Educational Tour to Germany in February.

He is a member of the MMA football and Raiders teams.