Emily Heineman, a UNL student with majors in German and history and a graduate of Norfolk High School, has been awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Scholarship to Germany for the 2014-2015 academic year.
Heineman will be an assistant language instructor in an English classroom in a German school. She will also be able to reinforce her own skills in German and further her knowledge of the culture, she said.
Heineman said she hopes to help bridge the gap between American culture and German perception of Americans during her stay. One way she hopes to do this is to build on her previous UNL study-abroad experience when she volunteered in an anti-war museum. She hopes again to be able to volunteer in this way and to serve as a museum tour guide.
“I would give tours to people in German and English, so my German did improve a lot while working there,” she said.
Upon her return to the United States, Heineman said she plans to pursue a master’s degree in German education. This will build upon her tutoring experience with Lincoln Literacy Council, as well as her time in the German classroom during her Fulbright experience. She said she hopes to share her enthusiasm for language learning as a basis for cultural learning with future students.
Heineman’s is the second announced Fulbright to a UNL student this spring. Abigail Jameson, a junion nutrition and health sciences major, will travel to Indonesia on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship. For more on Jameson’s Fulbright, go to http://go.unl.edu/ttkp.
“I’m excited to go back to Europe and revisit places I’ve been and see places I haven’t,” said Heineman, who spent seven months in UNL’s Deutsch in Deutschland program. “I love travel and I’m thrilled to do something I wouldn’t have gotten to do without a Fulbright.”
She said she attributes her success in part to Laura Damuth, UNL’s director of national and international fellowships.
The Fulbright Program, established in 1946 and funded by the U.S. Department of State, is designed to foster understanding between the United States and other countries. The U.S. Student Fulbright program gives recent graduates, graduate students and young professionals the opportunity to conduct research, study or teach in one of the 155 designated countries. About 8,000 grants are awarded annually, and about 1,600 of those grants are awarded to U.S. students.
