Alumni Showcase

I graduated from ISU in 2007 with a BA in French and went on to serve in the Peace Corps until the end of 2009 as a secondary education teacher in Lesotho, Africa.

Living in a rural village without amenities, I initiated youth clubs at our school to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic (nearly one third of the population) in addition to my teaching responsibilities.

I served on the Project Advisory Committee which oversaw the goals of our education program and made recommendations to adhere to them and improve our capacities as volunteers. Additionally, I chaired the Gender and Development Committee for which I wrote, managed, and reported on a PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) grant for nationwide workshops to engage youth and teachers in gender norm transformation, education about women’s rights, and most importantly critical HIV/AIDS training for them to take back to their communities.  By the end of my service I attained an intermediate-high level of Sesotho language.

My French degree provided a solid framework with which to acquire another new language – Sesotho, which has over ten noun classes!  My time studying abroad (in Angers, France) also prepared me greatly.  It gave me the experience of being a minority in another culture, learning to be open to new daily norms, and having the resiliency to bounce back from daily challenges.

Growing up in Central Illinois, I had always dreamed about life in distant places. I started learning French at the age of 11 and then began with German at the age of 15. I knew at some point that I wanted to use the foreign languages I was learning in my career and to accomplish my long-term goal of living and working in Europe.

After high school, I went to Illinois State University and double majored in International Business and French with a minor in German. I took advantage of the study abroad program and went to the Université de Grenoble in France. I finished up my studies in the States and did an internship with the United States Department of Agriculture in Washington D.C., which included time spent in St. Petersburg, Russia working on a joint American-Russian Farm Project.

After my internship, I started working in the Agri-business Industry spending most of my first three years working in both Montréal, Québec and in Medicine Hat, Alberta Canada. I switched companies and went to New York City working in a joint venture for the export of US feed products. After spending some time here, I transferred to St. Louis and then back to New York, always hoping for an opportunity to go back to Europe and live and work. This was my dream. The opportunity then arose. I was given the chance to move to Hamburg, Germany to work in our trading office for Northern European Proteins. I was working, living and using German every day. My German improved leaps and bounds living in the country by having to speak it every day. I transferred to our Mannheim, Germany facility in 2004 and am the Senior Trader and Logistics Manager here. I don’t even think about speaking German anymore. It is just a part of my life and has become almost as easy for me as English. I continue to use my French with the French brokers and customers we have and have taken up a new challenge three years ago – learning Italian.

It is clear that you can do a lot of things with a foreign language. It automatically gives you access to people and it does not matter if you make the occasional mistake. You are making the step towards them and to speak “their” language. This clearly gives you an advantage in transacting business in a global environment, in that you also understand the way that “they” think.

I have been to Europe, Asia and parts of the Middle East and Latin America. I take the lessons with me I have learned in the international environment in which I have lived and worked. What I have realized is that people are pretty much the same wherever you go. It deals with being humble, listening more than you speak and the way that you approach others and also trying to speak at least of couple of words of the language of the country you are in. You would be surprised what can happen if you say “thank you” in the language of the country you are in. It will bring smiles to faces.

I would sum up my traveling experiences with a quote from Michael Ondaatje, author of “The English Patient”. “I think travel is a lot of things; exploring, forgetting and leaving behind. The traveler is alone with himself. He leaves the center of his life behind, the most familiar people and things. Many of my characters are nomads and emigrants. Their lives become disrupted or changed and that in turn changes them. Many of my protagonists are on a journey, often one that is both real and spiritual, a journey of personal development.”

While in my second year of graduate school at Illinois State, I knew I wanted to continue teaching language. In short, I loved my time teaching with the university and putting into practice the methods and techniques I had learned through various pedagogy classes that I wanted more even experience. After reading advertisements seeking native English speakers to teach in France, I knew I had found what I was looking for.

As an undergraduate, I studied in Angers, France through the university and loved being in another culture, not to mention speaking French on a daily basis. This second time, I would find myself staying for an academic year and having a job, which required a whole new host of difficulties to frustrate, but to also expand my linguistic repertoire. Fortunately, the excellent training I had received as both an undergraduate and graduate student had prepared me to handle these complicated new situations successfully.

Currently, I teach English to elementary schoolchildren at three different schools. It is so fulfilling to be able to use the knowledge and practices I first experienced at Illinois State and apply it with students a continent away. How exciting to take students from knowing only a few scattered words in English and moving them towards full sentences. They begin the year with numbers and colors and end it describing their families, what they like to eat, and asking for information.

This would not have been possible without the support I received at Illinois State from the faculty who truly love what they teach. One day I would like to work towards a Ph.D. in foreign language teaching and help others to become the teachers they want to be and to love their work as much as I do.

While I knew that teaching was not the path for me in pursuing a degree in French at Illinois State, I was first unsure exactly of what I wished to do with my degree. After interning a summer in San Francisco with the International Rescue Committee, a refugee and asylee resettlement agency, I gathered a vague sense that I was interested in the work of non-profit organizations.

During my final year at Illinois State, however, after a growing interest in issues of international trade, economics, and poverty reduction, I searched for opportunities to witness the application of theory I was studying in a development economics course. After studying French, I was eager to pick up another language, and I went to Paraguay shortly after graduation. Here I worked in a microfinance organization, which had programs in microlending, Junior Achievement and sustainable agriculture. I had a wonderful experience during my four months in Paraguay, learning about microfinance, speaking with clients about their loans and small businesses, and seeing new development projects evolving within the organization.

I returned to the U.S. with a renewed enthusiasm for economic development, and spent the summer of 2007 working with another financial non-profit organization in San Jose, CA which distributes small business and community development loans to clients in the Bay Area.

My degree in French has been a major starting point for engaging in international issues. I am currently applying to masters programs in public policy and agricultural economics, with hopes to eventually work in developing country economic development policy and consulting. As French and Spanish are spoken in many developing countries, my language degree will prove a valuable asset in future work experiences.

Learning German was one of the best decisions of my life. Also, I would say that my German studies at ISU were actually better than Middlebury College, where I finished my Masters in German in 1995. After my graduate studies, I worked professionally in Hamburg (Als Exportleiter bei einem Handelsunternehmen) for three years and then Warsaw and Krakow for four years. To make a long story short, the ISU German section provided me with the foundation I needed to excel in German. I am very thankful for that.

From 2004 to 2008, I worked as Business Development Manager with a company by the name of cm4all.com. It is a German software company based in Cologne, Germany. I was responsible (by developing customer base) for their market entry into North America.

Students/parents/people shouldn’t need to be convinced of the benefits of learning a foreign language. The world has shrunk. The world is more and more interconnected (through economics, politics, environment, finance, etc.).

I have worked for some pretty good companies because my German language skills separated me from other people. Just being smart or having a business degree isn’t a differentiator any longer.

In addition to being able to speak a foreign language, I learned that it is extremely important to understand local cultural nuances (whether in business or in social settings). For example, in Germany, when you make a statement it is important to be able to defend it with facts or a reasonable argument. If not, they will think you are a dunce. Take a guess if I ever made that mistake – several times, but I learned.

I used to get asked a lot why I studied German, and if I actually thought it would be useful!  In the end, studying German was what made me a unique candidate for employment — it showed I wasn’t scared to try something different, that I was open to new cultures and this uniqueness opened many doors for my career.

When I graduated in 2004, I went to work for a non-profit and learned a great deal about German and American business relations. This position gave me the foundation for a futher experience of living abroad with the Congress Bundestag Youth Exchange, where I spent a year abroad studying and completing an internship.

Upon returning to the United States, I was recruited by a company specifically looking for dual language speakers — now I’m working for a German manufacturer of wind turbines and use my language skills on a daily basis!

My primary responsibility is to ensure that all our needs are met for Wind Turbine Projects. I work directly with Production, Sales and Supply Chain Management to communicate and coordinate project needs. I’m responsible as well for documenting and tracking material movements, stocks and finalized construction. The picture here is at at a project recently put up in Wisconsin.

Even if you don’t use German upon leaving college, it’s an interesting language rich with culture and history.

I began studying German in junior high and had an interest in foreign languages, although I did not know at that time that it was the field I would end up pursuing. Being originally from Normal, I had the opportunity to enroll in college-level German courses at ISU as a high school junior, and I took two 200-level courses, one on literature and another on composition. During my senior year of high school, I traveled to Stralsund, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Eastern Germany on the Baltic Sea Coast. The exchange began with a group of Americans together at an orientation, and it quickly became clear that the coursework I had done with the German professors at ISU had given me a tremendous advantage in rapidly being able to speak and understand the language fluently and hence concentrate on learning more about the country’s culture.

When I returned from Germany, there was no question that German was what I should study. The experience I had with the German professors at ISU was certainly second-to-none. I strongly doubt that any department can claim professors who are as genuinely interested and acute to each students’ specific interests, strengths and weaknesses, and who would offer more encouragement for all students. Considering that my fellow German students and I were frequently so very different in our particular interests, our ideas in what we wanted to use our degree for, and our skills and weaknesses, this is no small task.

I never had an intention to teach at a high school level when I first started, and simply knew that German was something I greatly enjoyed studying, which in itself is the best reason to study anything, but the degree to which ISU’s German professors challenged me laid the foundation for the career in academics in the field of German that I am currently pursuing. I received more than just a foundation in German in my undergrad career at ISU, and it is currently helping me as I work towards an M.A. and then a Ph.D. in this same field. I was even given the opportunity to help a professor with his research, performing tasks transcribing 16th-century typescript as well as being exposed to an earlier form of the language; needless to say, this was a valuable experience, the benefits of which I am currently reaping as a graduate student. If it were not for the true teaching and scholarly excellence of specifically ISU’s German professors, I may well have ended up pursuing something else entirely.

My interest in world travel and culture was expanded under the mentorship of ISU’s German professors, and I have since undertaken two major trips to Europe, not just to Germany, but elsewhere throughout Europe as well. My interest in all foreign languages as well as cultures has become not just a fun activity or pastime, but I am now well equipped to transform this interest into an academic career. Following my B.A. at ISU, I have received a full tuition and fee waiver as well as a stipend in the form of a graduate school fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, making it so I can completely concentrate on my studies while being supported in doing so, and there is no question that I would not have this advantage without the German professors at ISU.

Growing up in Central Illinois, I had always dreamed about life in distant places. I started learning French at the age of 11 and then began with German at the age of 15. I knew at some point that I wanted to use the foreign languages I was learning in my career and to accomplish my long-term goal of living and working in Europe.

After high school, I went to Illinois State University and double majored in International Business and French with a minor in German. I took advantage of the study abroad program and went to the Université de Grenoble in France. I finished up my studies in the States and did an internship with the United States Department of Agriculture in Washington D.C., which included time spent in St. Petersburg, Russia working on a joint American-Russian Farm Project.

After my internship, I started working in the Agri-business Industry spending most of my first three years working in both Montréal, Québec and in Medicine Hat, Alberta Canada. I switched companies and went to New York City working in a joint venture for the export of US feed products. After spending some time here, I transferred to St. Louis and then back to New York, always hoping for an opportunity to go back to Europe and live and work. This was my dream. The opportunity then arose. I was given the chance to move to Hamburg, Germany to work in our trading office for Northern European Proteins. I was working, living and using German every day. My German improved leaps and bounds living in the country by having to speak it every day. I transferred to our Mannheim, Germany facility in 2004 and am the Senior Trader and Logistics Manager here. I don’t even think about speaking German anymore. It is just a part of my life and has become almost as easy for me as English. I continue to use my French with the French brokers and customers we have and have taken up a new challenge three years ago – learning Italian.

It is clear that you can do a lot of things with a foreign language. It automatically gives you access to people and it does not matter if you make the occasional mistake. You are making the step towards them and to speak “their” language. This clearly gives you an advantage in transacting business in a global environment, in that you also understand the way that “they” think.

I have been to Europe, Asia and parts of the Middle East and Latin America. I take the lessons with me I have learned in the international environment in which I have lived and worked. What I have realized is that people are pretty much the same wherever you go. It deals with being humble, listening more than you speak and the way that you approach others and also trying to speak at least of couple of words of the language of the country you are in. You would be surprised what can happen if you say “thank you” in the language of the country you are in. It will bring smiles to faces.

I would sum up my traveling experiences with a quote from Michael Ondaatje, author of “The English Patient”. “I think travel is a lot of things; exploring, forgetting and leaving behind. The traveler is alone with himself. He leaves the center of his life behind, the most familiar people and things. Many of my characters are nomads and emigrants. Their lives become disrupted or changed and that in turn changes them. Many of my protagonists are on a journey, often one that is both real and spiritual, a journey of personal development.”

“My study abroad experience in Italy, as well as the Italian Studies minor, continue to influence my life in direct and sometimes more subtle ways. Only a few months ago I flew to Boston to reunite with some of my classmates from Florence and the five of us spent a day walking around Boston’s North End (Little Italy) while discussing our still thriving love of all things Italian. As for the influence of the Italian Studies minor, it has on multiple occasions earned me brownie points during job interviews. It is prominently featured under the education portion of my resume, and about half of all my interviewers have asked about my study of Italian. So, even if I’m not working in a field directly dependent on my previous study of Italian language, culture, and history, that academic pursuit is a constant conversation starter during job interviews. I’d recommend the minor to future students for this reason, in addition to the fact that the coursework was very interesting.”

I live in New Orleans, Louisiana, and am a Construction Supervisor with Habitat For Humanity. I’ve been with Habitat now for about 16 months (since October 2006) and am trying to do my part to help the city rebuild post-Katrina. My job basically entails teaching the volunteers we get everyday how to do anything from building walls for a house to putting up siding to building stairs. Along with teaching volunteers how to build a house I am responsible for all the administrative tasks that are involved (scheduling sub-contractors, ordering materials, taking care of special guests that come to site…things of that nature). 

There are a large number of immigrants here working in the city, helping to rebuild because there are jobs to be had and work to be done. A number of our subcontractors are Spanish speakers so I speak with them quite frequently in Spanish as their English is still developing.

If you are interested in finding out more about what Habitat is doing in New Orleans, you can go to this website: http://www.habitat-nola.org/

Through the graduate program in this department, I I had the opportunity to do a comparative analysis of the Spanish Peninsular and Latin American regions. I also studied abroad at La Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain. It was a life-changing experience for me! I developed a greater understanding of the diversity within the Hispanic culture and it also enhanced my knowledge of the Spanish language.

The instructors in this department are extremely supportive and prepare you for any career you decide to pursue. ISU prepared me to confidently pursue my career goals con ganas!

Nadia is currently the Managing Director for McGuireWoods Consulting Romania. She joined the McGuireWoods team in February 2007 to help open the firm’s newest office in Bucharest. With a unique combination of skills in diplomacy and international and media relations, Nadia focuses her practice primarily on business development, government relations and strategic communications.

Prior to joining MWC, Nadia served as First Secretary at the Embassy of Romania in Washington. In that capacity, she was responsible for promoting Romania’s policies and interests before the United States Senate; strengthening relations with American investors in Romania; and articulating the Romanian perspective on international security to various Washington think tanks.

Nadia is also an accomplished journalist having worked for two newspapers and as a correspondent for the Romanian National Television. She has written extensively on foreign policy related to the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America.

I am Stephanie Gurewitz, I’m 25 years old and from Chicago, Illinois. I attended Illinois State University from August of 2003 to May of 2007. I was a Spanish major and sociology minor. I spent my spring semester of 2006 in Madrid, Spain.  I lived with a host family there and had an incredible time. I connected well with my family, made new friends and had the opportunity to travel– which was my main reason for going- except for improving my Spanish, of course.  I was able to travel all over Spain, to Portugal, France, Italy, Greece and Egypt. I learned so much about not only myself, but the world as well.

Once I graduated I began working as a case manager for a foster care program. I worked for a non for profit Hispanic agency that was contracted through the government. I worked for DCFS, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services for Hispanic clients. I used my Spanish every single day and could not have been happier to.  The job was extremely stressful, but rewarding.

After 2 years working as a social worker, I decided to take a break and travel for a while before beginning graduate school. I left in November of 2009 for 2 and a half months to travel South America. I bought a plane ticket, packed my back pack and planned nothing else. I went throughout Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Bolivia. I traveled for 70 days and went to (and through) over 50 cities. It was an unbelievably rewarding experience and I would not have changed a single thing. The people I met were welcoming, helpful, generous and fun. My Spanish (although almost perfect!) continued to improve. I returned in late January and within a few days began the graduate program at Loyola University Chicago. I am in a full time program for 2 years. I will intern at another community agency that serves the Hispanic population and I also work at a bar. As we all know, social work plus students equals broke.
There is something about being able to travel and experience life from the rest of the world that gives you an incredible sense of appreciation for life. There are so many opportunities out there, so many people to meet and places to see. A year ago in March, I got a tattoo on my wrist which says lo que sea, “whatever will be”. It is unquestionably the best way to live.