Congratulations to German and Business Administration double major Taylor Kerr ’22, who has received a scholarship from the German Language and Culture Foundation (GLCF) in Charlotte to participate in this summer’s virtual iteration of CofC’s Cultural Vistas Internship to Germany Program. The GLCF supports the learning of German at schools and universities in the Charlotte area, with the goal of encouraging students to combine German proficiency with workforce skills in order to provide career opportunities with the over 200 US subsidiaries from German speaking countries in the Charlotte region.

This summer, Taylor participated in a one month intensive virtual German language course at the Carl Duisburg Centrum and is now in the middle of a two month internship with the Fields Institute in Berlin. The Fields Institute is  a sustainability and corporate responsibility company that focuses on creating initiatives to educate their community about sustainability issues. In her role, Taylor has been focused on  a social media survey project with questions relating to potential future outcomes of people’s daily lives. Specifically, She has been working on researching and writing the questions, writing summaries for the privacy policies for various social media platforms, creating a timeline and project plan for the project overall, posting the questions on social media, and then analyzing and interpreting the responses. The goal of the project is to examine the imagined future of people in different societal developments in order to gain insight into possible futures and share those with the community.

Taylor, a native of Charlotte, NC,  is grateful for the support and enthusiastic about the program and her work: “This has been a really amazing experience so far, as it is my first time working with a German company. I meet with my direct supervisor every morning and then once a week with the entire team to brainstorm ideas and talk about the next steps, all in German! I am so grateful to the GLCF for helping make this immersive cultural and work experience possible for me this summer!”

Taylor Kerr (upper right corner) meeting with her team at the Fields Institute in Berlin.