Two Alumni Receive DAAD Fellowships

Claire Park ’16 and Annelise Sauter Ortiz ’16 have been offered fellowships to study in Germany next year through Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD), the German Academic Exchange Service.

DAAD supports programs and funding for American and Canadian students, faculty, researchers, and others in higher education to study in Germany, promoting international cooperation.

Park, who majored in government with a minor in German studies, plans to use the fellowship to pursue a master’s of political economy. She says she was drawn to DAAD because it offered the opportunity to study and live abroad while she researches how conceptions of work and labor influence political behavior.

While at Dartmouth she did an independent study on Germany’s official definitions of citizenship and its anti-immigrant extremist movement, PEGIDA. “Doing research was just a lot of fun,” she says, “like my own bildungsroman plot—exposing myself to articles and books from weird corners and lower levels of Baker-Berry, collecting data from PEGIDA’s social media platforms, discussing findings with my adviser.” Her adviser, Associate Professor of German Studies Veronika Fuechtner, encouraged her to apply for the DAAD.

Park also credits government faculty, including Michelle Clarke, Russell Muirhead, and Henry Clark, and seminars and discussions hosted by the Political Economy Project with helping to shape her direction. Since graduation, she has been working in New York City, an experience that has influenced her academic interest in labor. “Working in the for-profit sector immediately after graduating has also encouraged me to look into how we think about work.”

Originally from San José, Costa Rica, Sauter Ortiz majored in economics modified with environmental studies and minored in German studies. The DAAD fellowship drew her because she was looking for master’s programs in development in Europe, she says. Through DAAD, she would be attending the University of Passau, on the Austrian border. (She is still deciding between the DAAD scholarship and another program in the U.K.)

Sauter Ortiz says opportunities for experiential learning at Dartmouth changed her trajectory. During an environmental studies foreign study program in southern Africa, she participated in a hands-on research project in Namibia for which she interviewed residents and presented findings at a local research center. “That was the first time I saw that I really like to learn in this way,” she says. “It’s really different from the typical classroom setting.”

On campus, her “Environmental Studies 50” class partnered her with a community organization to complete a project, and her “Economics 70” class traveled to Peru over winter break to see firsthand what they had learned in the classroom. Among her activities outside of the classroom, Sauter Ortiz was an undergraduate adviser and a research assistant for Assistant Professor of Economics Taryn Dinkelman, and was active in the Sustainability Office. Ultimately, Sauter Ortiz says, she wants to return to Costa Rica to work in sustainable development.

Sauter Ortiz credits Dartmouth for opening opportunities like the DAAD to her. “I feel lucky to have been able to have gone to college there and still have access to these opportunities even after I have graduated,” she says.

To learn more about how to apply for DAAD fellowships and other programs, visit Dartmouth’s National Scholarships/Fellowships website.