Chloe Goff ’25, German and International Studies double major, is interning this summer in international developmental aid in Munich. She is working for Menschen für Menschen in München, a Munich-based NGO that provides developmental assistance in Ethiopia. There are about 25 people in the Munich office and 600 on the ground in Ethiopia. Chloe has been working on social media marketing for the organization.

Chloe received her placement via CofC’s longstanding Cultural Vistas Summer Internship Program in Germany program, now in its 20th year! As part of the program, students take a 4-week intensive German language course in Berlin and are then placed in a two-month internship in their field, regardless of major or area. The Program’s director Stephen Della Lana conducts site visits of the interns in June and just visited with Chloe today.

German Studies and International Studies major Chloe Goff ’25 (right) and Cultural Vistas CofC Summer Internship Program Director Stephen Della Lana (left) catch up and check in about her internship over dinner in Munich.

Many thanks to CofC’s friends at Mankiewicz Coatings LLC, who donated a 2023 Study Abroad Award to support a German Studies major interning in Germany this summer. This year’s award recipient, Supply Chain Management and German Studies double major Shane Love ’25, will be headed to Berlin CofC’s Cultural Vistas Summer Internship Program to Germany this coming weekend, where he will be spending the month of May in an intensive language course at the Carl Duisberg Centrum Berlin and then interning in Supply Chain at Kronos Packaging Berlin in June and July. Today, Shane and German and Russian Studies Chair Dr. Koerner visited the Mankiewicz Coatings Plant on Daniel Island to thank them for their support and catch up with CofC German Studies major and Mankiewicz intern Julia Hancock ’25, who is loving her internship at the company!

Thank you Mankiewicz Coatings Team for supporting study abroad in Germany and mentoring our students and providing them with practical work experience at a fabulous German company here in Charleston!

From left to right: Mankiewicz Coatings LLC Managing Director Fabian Grimm, German Studies major and Mankiewicz intern Julia Hancock, Mankiewicz Coatings Study Abroad Award recipient Shane Love, HR director Amber Paugh, and Dr. Morgan Koerner

On Wednesday, Mercedes-Benz Vans LLC CEO Axel Bense visited Professor Ramona Montjoy’s German Studies 122 Class (Understanding German Business Culture), lectured about Mercedes-Benz Vans’ plant in North Charleston, and answered students’ questions about the company and career paths!

This weekend CofC’s German Studies Program is well represented at the annual conference of the German Studies Association  in Houston, Texas!

Assistant Professor of German Studies Dr. Sarah Koellner is presenting on a panel today on “Zeh in the Age of the Pandemic,” with a paper entitled: “Retrotopia and the (Lost) Future of Privacy in Juli Zeh’s Corpus Delicti”

Professor of German Studies Dr. Nancy Nenno is presenting this afternoon on the topic ““Can the Subaltern Speak?” Speech, Representation, and Embodiment in Marcus Schleizner’s film Angelo (2018)” at panel on “The Austrian Literary and Cinematic Present beyond the Canon.”

.

Michael Kanes, a rising junior majoring in Biology and German, is doing his summer internship in Germany at St. Joseph’s hospital in Berlin-Tempelhof. When Herr DL visited him, he was observing and assisting with gastrointestinal surgeries, and will rotate to other areas of the hospital in the remaining 4 weeks of his internship. He is thrilled to be there and is happy to gain phenomenal resume busting experience while improving his specialized medical terminology in German.

“Since being here, I have been able to experience medical procedures that I wouldn’t have been able to do until medical school in the United States! I have been able to scrub into surgeries, work in several different departments inside the hospital, and converse with doctors from all over the world. I have also had a lot of time to explore Berlin, as well as Germany as a whole! I have been to Munich, Potsdam, and Prague, and I plan on going to Hamburg and Vienna before I depart back to the US. This experience has been incredible so far and I am so lucky to be able to explore this beautiful country!”

German and Psychology double major Darby Watford, one of this year’s recipients of the Eady Scholarship for Study Abroad, is currently interning in Berlin as part of CofC’s Cultural Vistas Summer Internship to Germany program.

“I have loved my time in Germany! Being fully immersed in the German culture has allowed me to practice my German language skills with native speakers and has helped me improve immensely as a student and a person. As an intern at Dr. Thorsten Dolla’s orthopedic/sports medicine practice in Berlin, I have been able to dive into the field of orthopedics and healthcare in Germany.”

Congratulations to German Studies and Marine Biology double major Ali Isaacs ’23, who received a nationally competitive Gilman Scholarship for Study Abroad in Germany this summer. Ali took an intensive language course at the Carl-Duisburg Institute in Berlin in May and is interning at Geomar in Kiel, Northern Germany, where she is studying the effects of ocean plastic wastes on sea sponges.

Congratulations to Baker Garland ’22, CofC German and Exercise Science double major, who just received the prestigious Congress Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals (CBYX) Fellowship to Germany for next year! As part of the program, she will receive two months of intensive German training starting in August, attend a semester of classes in Exercise Science at University, and then complete a 5 month internship in her field! This August, she will be joining a select list of CofC German majors who have been accepted over the years, along with Senior Instructor of German and 1989-90 Fellow Stephen Della Lana, pictured with Baker below

.

Congratulations to Russian Studies Program director Dr. Irina Erman, whose article “Nation and Vampiric Narration in Aleksey Tolstoy’s “The Family of the Vourdalak” from January 2020 received the inaugural Levin Prize for best article in The Russian Review. Dr. Erman went on the SRB Podcast recently to discuss the article and her work. Check out the podcast here: https://srbpodcast.org/2021/10/08/the-vampires-of-a-k-tolstoy/?fbclid=IwAR1sWitYsumAMAVNalTFzXMESoq_q-bBevOxCDorQRmzsMyiqcr9OhsrCCM

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.