Two Kenyon students and one alumna earned three prestigious scholarships to study in Germany during the 2015-16 academic year.
The German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst or DAAD in German), the largest funding organization in the world supporting the international exchange of students and scholars, granted Seth Myers ’17 a semester-long scholarship and Alisa Rethy ’15 a two-year graduate scholarship. In addition, Nicholas Gutsche ’17 was accepted in the Research Internships in Science and Engineering program.
“They’re pretty prestigious and hard to get,” said Leo Riegert., associate professor of German, of the DAAD scholarships.
Myers, a German and English double major from Kansas City, Missouri, will study next semester at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. “I’ll be looking at novels by East and West German authors after the divide in 1949,” Myers said.
Rethy began studying comparative literature at the Freie Universität in Berlin at the beginning of fall semester.
Riegert says Rethy didn’t begin learning German until she arrived at Kenyon, then wrote her honors thesis in German her senior year. “Alisa is a really talented student of language,” he said.
Rethy says the assistant teacher (AT) program was particularly beneficial for her. “The instruction and support of my German professors at Kenyon and my involvement in the AT program — both as a student and as a teacher — greatly helped prepare me for my current studies,” she said.
For Gutsche, the DAAD award allowed him to study science in Germany. The chemistry major from Wilmington, Delaware, spent this past summer at the Max Planck Institute in Chemistry in the city of Mainz, where he explored the properties of nanoparticles — microscopic bits of matter with a range of biomedical, optical and electronic applications. He is considering a career in medicine or research after graduation.
Riegert said that in general Germany provides a number of possibilities for students who want to study there. “Our students do very well in these type of fellowship opportunities in Germany,” he said. “Students who receive these scholarships go on to have wonderful opportunities.”