When senior Katie Gladych first came to Lawrence as a music major, she knew she wanted to study abroad during college. She wasn’t sure where at first, but ended up going to Vienna, Austria during the fall of her junior year. Now a German and government double major, Gladych is preparing to return to the historic city next fall. This time she’ll go as a Fulbright scholar, having recently received a $15,400 fellowship to teach English for a full school year in a Viennese secondary school.
Originally attracted to Vienna by the opportunities it offers music students from around the world, Gladych was also quickly drawn in by the city’s culture.
“I really just fell in love with [Vienna] right away,” she said of her 2006 experience there.
Gladych knew she wanted to find a way to go back, and a program through the Austrian-American Educational Commission provided her with an opportunity to do so. The Austrian-American Educational Commission is a division of the Fulbright Program, which was established by Congress in 1946 with the aim of improving “mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the peoples of other countries.”
After traveling to Austria at the end of September for a week-long orientation and training, Gladych will teach from October through May 2009. Students in the school where she will teach range from grades five to 12, and consequently will have many different levels of English proficiency.
Gladych began taking German classes at Lawrence the year before she studied abroad, and said that the small size of the German department at Lawrence was an asset as she improved her language skills.
She looks forward to increasing her fluency in German while in Vienna, and also hopes to use her time there to look into opportunities for further work and study in the Austrian capital. She has entertained the idea of graduate school in Vienna, and is also interested in applying her government training to an internship at the United Nations office there. Gladych believes the two could be done in tandem, and will investigate the possibility while abroad.
Gladych awarded fourth fulbright
