Central College senior Garrett Southwick of Scottsdale, Ariz., has won a 2017-2018 Fulbright U.S. Student Award to Germany. The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program of the United States. Southwick, a German studies major, will represent the U.S. as a cultural ambassador while helping teach English in a German high school.
“My Fulbright scholarship feels like the perfect next step in my life,” says Southwick. “It’s been a goal or dream of mine since I was in high school to move abroad after college.”
The selection of Fulbright winners is highly competitive, with hundreds of applicants from prestigious institutions around the world. Central graduates Gregory Teets ’13 and Jake Wassenaar ’16 also won Fulbright awards and have served as English teaching assistants in Malaysia and Taiwan.
During his sophomore year at Central, Southwick studied abroad in Vienna for two semesters, working as an English language assistant intern at a local high school.
“Receiving the Fulbright is also incredibly validating for me — all of my hard work throughout college has paid off,” Southwick says. “I would have never been able to become a Fulbright scholar without everything Central has done to prepare me for this scholarship. I feel extremely confident in my abilities as an educator. Not to mention, I came to Central with almost no knowledge of German, and with my professors’ help I became proficient speaking German in just under two years.”
