 but more importantly to hear from Gilman advisors as well as Gilman scholarship recipients and folks who participated in the critical language scholarship program so you can go home and apply for these opportunities. In general we're gonna have about an hour dedicated to sort of talking about how you can make your study of dream's happen and how you can use the Department of State to get not only abroad initially but also how you can develop these programs into robust international affairs careers and hopefully if we're really lucky have you come join us at the State Department to work with all of us. So with that I'm gonna kick things off by asking our truly fabulous panelists to introduce themselves so we can kind of get started. So Alsace can you start by introducing yourself and telling us what you do and what institution you're affiliated with? Yes thank you all for joining thank you so much Amelia. My name is Alsace Lauren Gallup I am the National Scholarships and Fellowships Coordinator at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro North Carolina. You may know us as being home to the ANT4 who started the sit-in movement for younger students and also the home of Ronald McNair. I have been at ANT this is my fourth academic year here and in my ninth year as a fellowships advisor. My degrees are from University of Maryland College Park and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and as a fellowships advisor I'm really excited to help students and alums learn about what I call extraordinary opportunities and that definitely includes the critical language scholarship and the Gilman program. I had the pleasure and honor of studying abroad not as one of these programs recipients but through another program in graduate school in Spain that was my first time going abroad and I absolutely love that experience for what it showed me within myself and I love connecting students and alums to their own opportunities to pursue amazing graduate programs, internships, study abroad programs, language learning programs so that they can reach their dreams. So I'm very happy to be here today. Thanks so much Alsace. Brandon can I turn it over to you to do a quick introduction? Absolutely. Thank you Amelia and thank you to the Department of State for hosting this phenomenal conference. My name is Brandon Ramsey I did the critical language scholarship in Arabic in 2016 as well as the Gilman Scholarship in Amman, Jordan between the fall 2016 to spring 2017 and finally I also did another State Department fellowship known as the Congress Bundesstag Youth Exchange in Germany between summer 2018 to summer 2019. I got my bachelor's from Howard University and my master's in security studies at Georgetown University and currently I work as a foreign policy legislative correspondent in the office of Senator Chris Coons where I handle Sub-Saharan African Affairs, Western Hemisphere so that's everything from Canada down to Argentina and everything in between and finally Middle East Affairs as well as well as engaging with Delawareans, our constituents to help them understand foreign policy challenges and communicate our national interests abroad to our constituents in Delaware and across the United States. Thank you. Perfect. Thanks so much, Brandon and Kashmir. Last but not least, can you provide us with an introduction about yourself? Yes, thank you. My name is Kashmir Dotson. I'm a Spelmanite. I graduated from Spelman College in 2018 with the Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology and comparative women's studies with a Spanish minor and a film concentration. My junior year, I won the Gilman Scholarship so that was 2017 and I was able to go to Bahia, Brazil where I studied Afro-Brazilian culture in Portuguese. I currently am a school counselor at Colorado High School Charter GS. It's an alternative high school and I'm also a Gilman Alumni Ambassador and digital representative for this year. Perfect. Thanks so much, Kashmir. So folks, in terms of what we're going to do today is we're going to briefly go through the criteria and basics in terms of applying for the Critical Language Scholarship Program and the Gilman Program as well as tips for your applications going forward. But the more important part of the panel is really the questions and answers. This is an opportunity for you to get your questions answered by individuals who have actually done these programs, who approach these programs so you can sort of imagine how you can fit these into your academic trajectory, whether you are an undergrad, whether you're a master's student, that these opportunities are for you. So in terms of off the top, I, as I mentioned earlier, am a Foreign Service Officer, but I currently serve in the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs in our USA Study Abroad Branch. And our Bureau is completely dedicated to promoting mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries. And we do this through exchanges. In a given year, we generally are funding about 55,000 participants to engage in various exchanges. And about 15,000 of these individuals are American citizens. And most of the individuals are going anywhere from a one to two week program up to an entire academic year. We work with institutions all across the United States to sort of do this. And we fundamentally view Study Abroad as a form of diplomacy. And so our office, the entire goal of what we do is how we can increase and diversify Study Abroad for American students. And when you get on that plane, or you touch down, whether you're in Germany or Malaysia or Uganda, you are carrying those American values with you. And you're gaining soft skills that help our future leaders develop. And so that is sort of where diplomacy comes into the entire piece. Now, to sort of kick things off, I did want to turn it over to Elsays. Just to get her take in terms of why students should be thinking about any of these opportunities, whether it's the Critical Language Scholarship Program, whether it's the Gilman Program, how do these fit into why a student would want to do this on campus? And in short, what's your elevator pitch, Elsays? Yes, thank you so much, Amelia. I will say in short, you're doing yourself a disservice if you do not pursue an opportunity such as a Critical Language Scholarship or the Gilman Program. And that's for the simple matter of these programs are going to expand your personal perspectives, they're going to deepen your professional skills, they're going to help you build networks. And they're going to help you lead in whatever field that's going to be. Speaking from an HBCU perspective, I think it's critical that all students at HBCUs at least learn about what it means to go abroad, even if they don't go during undergrad for whatever circumstance. But I think it's particularly important to make sure that you are getting those global skills that are going to help propel you. And that really goes to the heart of when the HBCU education is known for nurturing students and building their opportunities and really preparing them to lead in any situation that might come across. So it's normal to be nervous about what it would mean to go abroad if you're thinking about being the first in your family to go abroad. Well, some students at HBCUs are the first in their family to go abroad. Both of my parents were the first in their families in some way to go to college and they were HBCU alum. So I am the product of an HBCU education and I am the first in my family to go outside the country. So I'm a living testament to what I'm saying as far as those skills that you're going to gain in the experience. But you're really, you're just going to be positioned so well to pursue whatever dreams you already know about and the dreams that you will develop as you go on. And I will pause there so I can get kind of passionate about that. But I really think that that's critically important and I will say one more piece. If you have any sense at all that you might be interested in working with the federal government, that's also another reason you need to apply for the Critical Language Scholarship of the Gilman Program or other programs that are through the Department of State that offer non-competitive eligibility as a new benefit. You can't beat that. That's really going to help you get your foot in the door into some great positions with the federal government. So it's a win-win situation to apply. Perfect. Well thanks so much Elsie. So with that we'll dive in real quick with the Critical Language Scholarship Program. So in general, when we think about the Critical Language Scholarship Program, basically the US federal government funds students to do an intensive summer program in 15 separate languages every single year and this is for students in all fields of study. It doesn't matter if you are an undergrad, a graduate student, everything is fully funded and these are overseas institutes that operate in 15 different languages and we work with a variety of language levels and so depending on your comfort with what languages you're looking at, we basically have nine languages that are for absolute beginners to start from the very beginning and you can sort of look at those on the screen. Everything from Azerbaijani to Urdu to Turkish. We also do advanced level studies in many of these languages and then we have additional languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Russian where in general you're working on existing languages that you've already started to study. In terms of the program itself, we cover every single aspect of the funding for the program so everything from your international travel to all of your housing when overseas as well as intensive language study over generally an eight-week period. Most students gain a full academic year's worth of language study in this short condensed period and again as I'll say sort of mentioned you get non-competitive eligibility which is preferential hiring within the federal government. If you're interested in general about the CLS program, we have all of the eligibility criteria, the language levels, and prereqs you can find those sort of on the CLS language scholarship website including videos and application tips but I think it is actually much better to hear from Brandon a bit about what CLS was actually like for him and sort of where it got him to. So Brandon can I turn it over to you to talk about what CLS was actually like? Absolutely, thank you. So before I get started I forgot to insert the disclaimer that you know all views expressed on my own and do not reflect the Office of Senator Chris Coons or Senator Chris Coons. In terms of how my experience was in CLS I want to start with why I decided to learn Arabic and it starts with curiosity. At the end of the day when I started to learn I took a class at Howard on the politics of the Middle East and North Africa and just became so thrilled at how much I didn't know and how much I wanted to learn and so when I learned about CLS as an opportunity to intensively learn the Arabic language I could think of no better thing to do than to learn through the lens of the people and the culture and the politics that I was studying. In terms of the language I fell in love with the culture not least because while I was at Howard the person I was dating at the time was an Arabic speaker so just learning these sounds like the iron that I'd never heard before that don't exist in the English language were things that I wanted to learn and so my experience at CLS it's exactly as it says on the website it was intense it was extremely challenging but it was also extremely rewarding and so by the by the time that I came out of the program I came in as a novice meaning you know I had one year of Arabic under my belt couldn't really express my views in all the ways that I wanted to but by the end of the program because I stuck with the language pledge not to speak any English in the two months I was living in MacNess Morocco I came out as an advanced Arabic speaker and was able to use my experience in CLS as a bridge to my Gilman experience in Amman Jordan teaching English in Arabic in the refugee community that I served in in Amman none of my students spoke any English and so I was able to basically reverse engineer the language skills and lessons that I learned through CLS to teach English to my my students that's absolutely fabulous Brandon and I'm always sort of amazed at how far folks language skills sort of progress just in the course of a summer to go from maybe conversational Turkish to suddenly being able to have a foreign policy conversation it's a completely different ball game but I think you alluded to our other program that we were sort of going to discuss which is the Gilman Scholarship Program and so in general for anybody who is on this session these opportunities are literally for you any of the education and cultural affairs exchanges that we run as the State Department are looking for incredibly talented Americans to go represent the United States overseas so with that I will give a brief overview of the Gilman program as well so that way you kind of get a sense of other opportunities that exist now the Gilman program is a little bit different than the critical language scholarship program because you as a student are fundamentally deciding what program you're going on it funds scholarships of up to five thousand dollars for Pell grant recipients to study abroad on any accredited program of their choosing so say you are a sophomore studying Arabic at Morehouse you might want to go do an intensive program in Morocco for example or you could go to any other location South Korea etc in general you select the program and you can get additional funding of up to three thousand dollars more to study a critical needs language generally you can study any accredited program in the world the caveats being that your program has to be credit bearing there's no minimum program length and you generally have to travel to a country that is either level one or two under the consular travel advisories or select level three countries we also have a specialty program for students of active duty military called the Gilman and Kane scholarship so you apply through the same general application but it doesn't require that your Pell grant recipient so if you're getting any type of financial aid you can apply for that program so long as your parents are active duty military we have two different application cycles each year for Gilman and the next one is coming up in March so March 1st but we also have a fall deadline as well depending on what your study abroad plans are as I mentioned you can get funding for additional language study in any of the languages listed in the screen it does require an extra essay but it does give you access to proficiency testing so if you want to see how far you came that can be a really great opportunity for students in general what we're looking for is the impact of what this program will do for you in your academic trajectory and your career goals we want to see how you're going to impact your community and your academic preparedness we look for your background and what you think you will bring to the table and if you're applying for that critical needs language award there's an extra essay in terms of why you want to study that language so with that I want to turn it over to Cashmere because she did a Gilman as well as Brandon so Cashmere what was it actually like to be a Gilman what did you do with your scholarship and where did you go it was great to be a Gilman it was certainly a blessing for me and my family because I wouldn't have been able to travel abroad if I hadn't gotten the scholarship but I would like to point out I was offered the Gilman twice so I applied for the Gilman in 2016 to go abroad for the very first time and to go to the Dominican Republic but my church came through and was able to fundraise enough money for me to not need the scholarship so I was able to allow for someone else to have that opportunity through Gilman that year and then I applied for the Gilman in 2017 and I was able to go to Bahia Brazil and there I being a Gilman scholar the big part for me was my requirements for my follow-on service project I did a documentary film and so I was documenting my experience the whole time while in Bahia Brazil and that was informative for me because I do consider myself a storyteller and filmmaker but it just allowed for me to explore different concepts and really reflect on my experience and my personal growth in a way that I probably wouldn't have been able to if I didn't have the digital evidence of my journey but I think for me a big part I studied Afro-Brazilian culture there and I ended up doing my senior thesis on the concept of Black womanhood so I just became really interested in Blackness abroad and I I will pursue that type of research and for my graduate degrees also and so it just sparked that curiosity in me but also I didn't know how I felt about having to learn Portuguese but I was so impressed with myself because in that month I don't know how long the summer program was but it was only a summer I was able to like pick up Portuguese and I was able to travel independently and from there like it birthed my desire to be a polyglot so that's what it was like for me. No that's awesome and that's exactly what we hope students will do on these programs and so I mean I guess with that I want to turn it over to Elsays and ask what what are your tips for students who start thinking about these opportunities because these applications can feel a little bit intimidating when you first go to these websites? Yes so the bottom line your goal should be don't if you feel nervous or that you are not going to be a fit you can have those feelings but put them to the side and just think about this as an exercise and can I do this application logistically like do I the Gilman does not require letters of recommendation the critical language scholarship now requires just one so okay do I know a professor who could write this letter if not okay that's a to-do list because I should be doing that in college anyway building connections with folks but really they're all going to center around a personal narrative and I think Brandon may touch on that if he is not already referenced that but telling your story why do you want to go abroad what are you hoping to learn and how can you bring value to your funders so in this case either critical language scholarship or the Gilman and then just start bullet points count as a draft sometimes people think I've got to set aside two hours and write and if it doesn't look right I'm just messed up and people forget the writing process is iterative you have to start over and over you cannot get a great draft unless you start off with a really bad draft and a lot of times that's the roadblock I see with applicants is that they're frustrated because the google drafts are our google sample essays and they're like mine doesn't look like this and it shouldn't look like that first of all because that's not you writing that story but that person has probably done at least 10 drafts also so you you should invest in yourself by just writing down your ideas and your goals bullet points or voicememos count and just keep going don't stop until you have submitted your application that would be my ultimate tip okay that is a few more if needed yeah I mean I think I would add in there just make sure to apply I think sometimes people talk themselves out of applying you can't win awards that you don't apply for so every single person go up to bat you guys can do this but I did want to turn it over to Brandon because Brandon you've applied for a lot of fellowships and been very successful in them so do you have any tips or strategies that you found really useful when you were sort of thinking through these programs yeah I think that's a great question to build off of what I'll say is just mentioning I think you know at the end of the day your application is a story and you are helping you know the review panel walk through your story and you're making a case for yourself and the easiest reason you know the easiest way to go about that is to just really think you know what do you want from this language is it the culture is it the food is it the politics and just kind of create that narrative around where the language falls in that in my case you know it's it's demonstrating that it's not just writing it it's showing it so it's it's putting in the application I took these classes I'm taking the language you know just letting them know everything that you're doing which demonstrates your commitment to to learn the language so that's my first point and the second point is you know talk to CLS alums I spoke with CLS alums who did the Arabic program they were extremely open you know to sharing tips and tricks and ultimately that helped me get a sense in real time of what you know a successful applicant looks like and you know I'm happy to say that it worked so you know CLS has those resources online they have their alumni reps as well after the panel I'm happy to chat with folks as well to talk through my experience and and yeah if you take away anything it's just owning your narrative and like I'll say said you belong the world needs you right and and just go out there and get it perfect thanks so much and Kashmir do you have any tips to add based on your experience or advice on maybe contacting Gilman alumni ambassadors in their application process yes so I am a Gilman alumni ambassador and I'm on a cohort of many others and one of our main jobs is to help we do like workshopping with applications and essays but just allowing for you all to ask us as many questions as possible but also like reading and giving feedback on your essays so that is something and the way you can get in contact with this is through the Gilman alumni network and there's like a link to it on the Gilman website but I feel my biggest application tip is to master the language of the US Department of State so like there's themes and like the language that that's even used to advertise or to inform you all about the those scholarships and so take note of that and if something is being repeated if a word is being repeated probably has significance and meaning so being able to master that and being able to utilize the Department of State's language to uplift your experiences and your personal narrative to show the connection between what this fellowship opportunity has to offer you and how you're how you're going to use it so yeah that's perfect and super useful and to all of our audience members please feel free to drop any questions you have in the chat whether it's on studying abroad what your experience was like overseas or professionally what you're up to now how you got from point a to point b we're here to answer questions but with that I sort of have one for both Brandon and Kashmir how do you sort of see these fellowship programs as helping you with your career trajectory were you expecting them to be linear and what has that been like in terms of the impact on where you are now branding can you start us off for um so I would say there's a direct you know correlation causation um in my career path um I can say with confidence that since I've done CLS and Gilman that it has come up in every interview people are curious not everyone gets the the opportunity and the privilege to study a foreign language and to experience another culture while also representing your own community and your own culture abroad so people are going to be curious you know what was it like in Morocco and Jordan and so once again just having comfort you know you know I hope that everybody on this conference gets you know these opportunities so that when you do eventually get into that interview see um that you can speak with confidence about all of the wonderful experiences you had and to your point Amelia the soft skills you know your ability to adapt to unfamiliar environments developing comfort outside being outside of your comfort zone um and and just the skills alone that it takes the brain power to master another language and convey your thoughts and opinions in another language um is compelling in of itself and employers recognize that no that's absolutely um debt on the money and really really useful I mean Kashmir what about for you how did sort of your Gilman and any of these fellowships tie in with your career path um to help you get where you are um I've always I've been taught to since I was youth to try to think about my purpose and um and to and to tie that into everything that I do to make my decisions purposeful and to like connect to what I think I'm here on earth to do and so I think I'm here um well I know I'm here my purpose is to utilize my gifts and talents to do good uh works throughout the world so that's very broad but it allows for me to draw on that line but more like a circle to connect all of um how this how my fellowship connects to what I'm doing now and all those things it's more of a circle um the big thing was I growing up I didn't I come from a mixed race family and um I grew up in uh Colorado and I specifically grew up in a uh um let me just put it this way at my high school there were 12 black identifying students so I I didn't feel um very much of a sense of like camaraderie I didn't see uh examples of like my family like my family structure very much and so I I saw after that studying abroad um and I I found camaraderie um abroad again in this idea of global um blackness and experience I saw uh representations of people and families that look like my own and so then that like again that sparked my desire to study uh blackness but then that also sparked my um my willingness as a school counselor to to allow for my students to know that there's validity in their narrative and that um no matter how isolated they may feel there there is somebody that can connect to it and and and being able to utilize these fellowships and these programs to to get to that to make those connections to build that network is is very valuable um and and will come back around and um my biggest thing that I do now as a school counselor is again like is something that I learned from applying to these fellowships which was mastering institutional language to lift up my own narrative and that's what I'm teaching my my kids now um as a school counselor I do a lot of like uh college essays and work and I'm teaching them to lift up their narrative through institutional language so yeah that's awesome thank you so much cashmere um and so I did want to share one other screen uh of for students who are looking uh to apply for these programs I wanted to make sure you had all of the websites handy um and let me do that real quick just so you have it um and again all of these slides will be available on sort of the interactive website afterwards but if you're looking to study abroad um in general any of these scholarships are sort of at cls scholarship.org gillman scholarship.org but through our department of state um websites we also list all of the exchange programs that the state department runs period and we have an entire study abroad website that has both private and public sector scholarships on it information on safety and health being overseas as well as funding opportunities and just general information so these are great resources in general and so definitely google is your friend on any of these you don't need to reinvent the wheel in terms of looking for listings on scholarships a lot of times your universities will have listings on funding opportunities as well um but with that I kind of wanted to ask uh I'll say what advice she kind of has for students when you're first starting to think about fellowships how do you go about this how do you talk to a fellowships advisor it's a little intimidating so what are your tips yes thank you Amelia and um I want to emphasize something that cashmere and brandon have touched on uh several times um in different phrasing which is that um they pursue their dream um you know it might have been a part of a dream it might have been a really um core element um playing the foundation for the dream but they went after it um and so they may or may not have had assistance from somebody on their campus um I want to encourage anybody who's out there whether you're applying for one of these two programs or it might not even be a program through um the department of state but if you want it you should go after it and you should build a team of people to support you so I have a it's a real honor for me to be able to do that um especially um at um North Carolina ANT State University um and uh to really invest in students so I want to emphasize that there are people whose job it is like I get paid to help students apply for funding and other programs that will help them pursue their dreams if you really just stop and think about it that might sound strange that's that you know I didn't know that this fellowship advising field existed before I got into it um and so I've stayed in it largely because it is so rewarding to help people pursue their dreams so that would be a top goal is to seek out um your fellowship advising staff you might be an office you might be one person it might be a professor who has five other hats but uh a lot of times that will be listed and there is an organization called the National Association of Fellowships Advisors um I'm actually the first um member from the HBCU elected to serve on the board or director so um that website is NAF advisors um if you just google that um and you'll see schools who have somebody who's a member so that's one great way to find out if you have a fellowship advisor if you don't already know about that but contact your study abroad office contact your career services office and your undergraduate research office um those are other places where you will typically find a fellowship advisor on your campus and let them help you um share with them your drafts um don't be as scared to say okay it's not a final draft because again it's their job they're getting paid to help you so if they're not going to help you they're going to help somebody else so why not let them help you um and uh to really just uh don't stop until you've submitted that application um build that team of people who are there to help and um again reach out to your resources so you're already know too right here cashmere and brandon um as alums and cashmere is a gillman alumni ambassador um your fellowship advisor might have somebody to help um part of the inaugural cohort of gillman advisor ambassador so again there's so many resources out here to help you pursue your dream so i would say make sure you're building that team and taking advantage of of all these resources um so that you can do the great things that you set out for yourself yeah absolutely and folks if you look at the cls program gillman um fulbright any of our sort of main flagship programs pretty much all of them have the alumni ambassadors um and so these are who will talk to you about the program and what the actual experience was like because it's great when you hear about something being lovely and all but you want to ask your questions um and i'll say as a gillman advisor is part of our brand new cohort of gillman advisors who love the program so so much they actually are volunteering to help other advisors all across the country to help get the word out on gillman um and so in short there are resources out there for you in terms of how you think about these programs but i think one of the big things we also want to keep in mind is how these programs actually impact us once we get back to our home campuses um and so i was really wondering cashmere what was it like to come back from brazil to spellman how did your experience abroad impact your remaining time and going forward what was that like okay so i have a really um have a story so i came back and uh then i went back home and then i the next month i went back to spellman and i was sitting like for like an event and these people were speaking a language and i was understanding it and i was like oh and then i just started like eavesdropping and they were speaking Portuguese so i felt really proud of myself that i still was able to understand um the language and then that that person that was having that conversation ended up being my afro-brazilian film teacher and so um there were just a lot of connections there like immediately uh upon coming back but i wouldn't have been able to have all those like specializations that i said before with my degree if i hadn't gotten the credit um from my study abroad uh program so that's a very like tangible thing like i i got credit for afro-brazilian studies within the um portuguese so uh that helped me with that and then um like i said it really my study really impacted my um what i would do for my thesis and i ended up being recognized um at spellman for my thesis uh for being uh the best interdisciplinary thesis that year so it's very rewarding in that way um but i think too like coming back and in talking about my experiences to like my family and other people um we were able to have some good conversations about representation and about my experience and um things that made them think differently and hearing how they responded to the things that i talked about it also made me think differently so just being able to share ideas um and and share our thoughts was really important to me but then coming back i um i did some service work uh for the first year but then i ended up applying for the Fulbright um fellowship and i and i ended up getting that to go teach english in colombia because i became fascinated with uh like with language and so i ended up getting the um my tuffel certification to teach english and um i wasn't able to do go on that adventure because of the pandemic but that led me to look at different ways that i could still be culturally immersed like i could be immersed in a culture um other than mine still here in the us and so that led me to looking for jobs um in the in in Park Hill Denver um where there's a large hispanic population and i ended up getting my job here at being a school counselor and i do even though sometimes it's butchered i do speak spanish every day and i'm i'm happy to be a point of contact to allow for my families to um have their voices heard and for my students to feel feel seen and again lifting them up in their multilingual abilities but also lifting them up to utilize uh institutional languages to to pursue their dream yeah yeah that's awesome um and it's so cool you're using your language skills um and continuing to but i think you had a really interesting point just in terms of how fellowships thread together you got the gillman then you applied for the Fulbright it helped you solidify career goals and i sort of sensed a similar narrative with brandon as well so brandon can you talk a little bit about how you went from one fellowship to another and how you sort of built and stacked on these um and your advice for students who might want to do the same yeah that's um great question um i i would say you know that my experience between cls to gillman um coming back to howard um it just crystallized my my you know conviction my commitment to to public service to to foreign and to pursue a career in foreign policy um so just seeking out those opportunities was already on my radar when i came back from that experience um i knew as well that i wanted to pursue a a master's degree as well in security studies um after you know witnessing and experiencing the things that i did in amand jordan um you know so i knew i wanted to take a gap year and therein lies the congress bundeshtab youth exchange um so i was able to do that gap year in germany um i also and i'm happy to talk about this in the q and a applied for the pickering and wrangle fellowships which are phenomenal programs and i highly recommend them for everyone um and just trying to get my foot in the door into the foreign policy world through grad school um you know from that point in grad school i was able to once again leverage the narrative of the experiences that i had um in you know cls and at gillman um to you know land uh an internship uh on the house foreign affairs committee as an intern um and from that uh was just you know able the whole world just opened up and and i was able to to ultimately um you know apply for job other jobs on the hill and landed in the office of senator chris coons working on foreign policy um all of that came or started rather with cls and gillman um and as i mentioned before you know when you are in an interview it will come up it is just such an attention grabber on your resume it's such a compelling um experience um and and i hope you know everybody applies no that's fabulous so i mean i guess one sort of follow-up question on that like we always hear about a lot of folks who studied abroad and they got really involved in international affairs afterwards but do you think that study abroad is just for international affairs folks um and what would be your advice to folks who maybe aren't thinking the international affairs path so i i mean so just on a personal level i love music right that is like you know i'm always listening to music i love music um being abroad you know it just exposes you to the to the you know other people you know other tastes and and food you know in music you know um i love to make shakshuka for example a very you know popular in israel and jordan um you know just little things like that like to this day um so you know and the people that i studied with you know take cash me for example um not everybody studied politics you know i met folks who were into the film into the visual arts um and ultimately what the thread that united all of us was just we were all curious to learn more outside of of you know our bubble called the united states um and just you know to apply those you know different cultural uh values and things that we learned to our day-to-day lives when we came back whether that's personal or professional um so i think that's a really great point that you don't need to study politics to to study abroad um and and that you will find your niche wherever you go perfect thanks and i'll say this is more of a question for you but um what do you do when you get students who apply for awards and maybe they don't get it the first time around um because sometimes we apply we write really good essays but what happens if you don't get the yes you're hoping for absolutely um i get a question a lot times about okay what are the statistics how many people get selected etc and i say well if you're looking at it as a numbers game um particularly for some um really well known programs such as the rose scholarship etc you're probably not going to get it so let's just get that out of the way so then why do you want to build a package that will explain what your story is um and uh what are your goals a lot of times students think they know what they want to do but they haven't put in writing and um that articulation through the application process is going to be more than worth this weight in gold um once you have done an application for something like the Gilman program the critical language scholarship the Fulbright program um you have really gone through a very thorough reflection about what what is important to you uh where you are now as far as assessing your current um skill set and how you plan to get to the next point in your journey and that's going to be really useful in any kind of situation whether you're going to apply for a professional or graduate degree program apply for internships during undergrad or a job afterwards um pursuing undergraduate research um starting your own business um those skills are not going to go away just because you're not selected and a lot of times that actually opens up another door for you maybe you weren't selected for this program but now you have this package ready and another opportunity is made available to you um it might not even be an opportunity that existed when you started your other application and now you can pursue that other um opportunity without um having to start from scratch again um and so really again it's it's if you think about it as an investment in yourself versus a competition then there's really no way you're going to lose um and I have worked I think it's fair to say I've worked with hundreds of students and alums by this point and I have not yet once um they're either um asking them questions or having them um unsolicitably give me feedback or through a survey nobody has said oh it was a waste of time I wish I hadn't done it they're just like oh you know the stains maybe that I didn't get it but I've had so many tell me oh my gosh I'm so glad I went through this process because now I'm better positioned for another opportunity or I realized I didn't want to do this thing that I have been telling people I want to do um ever since I applied to college I had to do a refresher what my actual goals are now because especially for those of you who are undergrads and CLS is also open to grad students uh the Gilman's just for undergrad so uh this is a really transformative time in your life so what you thought you went to do when you were applying to college as a high school senior maybe not even the same thing you want to do a year later particularly during a pandemic um so uh I would say you can't lose unless you're thinking of it as a competition with other people versus an investment in yourself awesome um and I'm seeing a lot of nodding from Cashmere and Brandon so I was wondering if either of you would like to jump in there and add uh just into this conversation on sort of refining your goals thinking about it facing rejection on occasion so I can jump in there um you know I I you know applied for so many fellowships and so many fellowships and you know you win some and you lose some um I mentioned the Pickering Fellowship I was an alternate for that I applied for the Fulbright I made it to the to the final round and I was an alternate there in both cases you know unfortunately I didn't get either of them but to Alcesa's point you know specifically let's say for Pickering um I knew I wanted to go to grad school and you know if you make it to the finals that final cut for for Pickering um you get on on people's radars right like the the different universities um around the country are going you know I don't know how they get the the list but you you know I just started getting outreach so that's like a perfect example of you know just putting your best foot forward and even if you don't you know uh you reach for the stars but you land on the moon you still you know made it um and to Alcesa's point I definitely for for um essays that I used in one fellowship application was able to kind of retrofit it and and readjust to other opportunities because once again the narrative and the things that you have done don't change how you market it and how you apply it to other opportunities does um so I think definitely apply for everything um and and you know keep keep pushing like that's it and I'm when you were going through all of your applications I mean did you sort of develop any networking strategies or skills that you sort of have used in the professional world and what sort of advice do you have for students when they're sort of putting their feet out there and applying for these things so I would say um you know just briefly I at Howard I had the privilege of having a wonderful fellowships and scholarships advisor at the time Dr. Miller um and you know just having someone that you can work with and you know who can flag those other folks and and within the networks uh to speak with so that that's one is once again plugging in to to Alcesa and to whatever universities you go to find your allies find your fellowship advisor your your professors your favorite professor is could could be that person that's one and two you know in the age of LinkedIn um you know putting in the search bar critical language scholarship Gilman and seeing who comes up um and just cold the equivalent of cold calling you know messaging on LinkedIn hi my name is would love to speak with you about um your experience with Gilman or critical language scholarship if you do that 10 times I'm get guaranteed someone will take you up on that offer um and and it will be a wonderful experience to hear about somebody else's uh time abroad no that's super useful especially on the LinkedIn front cashmere did you sort of develop any specialty professional networking skills sort of following on from your Gilman I know higher ed and um schools are a little bit different than maybe working on the hill but what did you sort of take away from your Gilman for professional networking strategies as cringy as it feels to self promote um self promotion um I gotten the habit of looping in my professors on every every step in my in my journey and looping in like the community members that I met and made contacts with the rotary and like making just looping people in to my development as a human being and as a professional and um it's been prosperous um not only for myself and keeping those networks going and those connections going but for my current students now you know there's people that I've been able to connect them to um that are part of organizations um that they hadn't been exposed to before and they're able to be a resource for them and um that is what my work that's what my work's about is exposing my students to opportunities and empowering them to know that these opportunities are for them and that they have a place in this world that as um Brandon was saying before and just yeah it it helps me help to help them so no that's fabulous and I hope that you are plugging all of our high school exchange programs as well to your students because a lot of people know that we do college opportunities but we also have a host of high school exchange programs that I didn't know about when I was in high school so um yeah um but with that we've got one really good question that I want to make sure we get to before we sort of wrap up um but this person is a STEM major um in engineering and they are wondering how they can fit any of these things into their scholastic requirements and so I'll say do you have any advice for any of the hard science students thinking about studying abroad um is study abroad for them are these fellowships for them yes yes yes absolutely um so A&T uh is very well known for the engineering but we have um we have excellent scholars um across all of our disciplines in humanities social sciences et cetera um we actually just had an engineering student get selected for a semester long program in the UK so he'll be going to the UK next year um and he's the first person from our university to get that um STEM students are underrepresented in going abroad so that's another way you can actually stand out that means that uh if you're underrepresented um especially for programs through the department state they're looking to make sure you are represented so you should definitely apply I am a proud um degree holder from a STEM degree biology uh my master's in healthcare administration and policy I studied abroad so I'm living proof that yes you can make it fit it might need to be in the summer or spring break but you should go and that's really going to also um make you stand out to employers as Brandon was saying also um because partly because you will be um underrepresented and study abroad as a STEM student um and then you're going to learn how science is done in a different country uh when I was in Spain I was looking at a comparative study of a healthcare utilization between the US and then Spain um so the what you're studying is should not limit you for your opportunities um you might have to do things differently than what you've heard um being done but you should not limit yourself at all um you can make it work and that goes for um maybe you are working a lot maybe you're helping to support your family you don't think you have time to fit that in um whatever your situation is STEM major um other obligations um first thing your family to go abroad again I was the first in my family to go abroad you can make it work build that team um talk to your peers talk to your professors talk to your fellowship advisor um make it work but just because you haven't seen it done before does not mean it's not for you and doesn't mean you can't do it just means that um you are going to help inspire somebody else to do it because you're going to go for that goal yourself no I love that especially building out your team because there's so many people who are already in your quarry you just have to think about it of like oh that math professor adores me or I did that really cool bio project um without other faculty member and you can sort of start to think like hey um who might look at my essay just as a favor who is the Alsace on my campus um but we basically are running out of time we only have three minutes so I have a sort of final question for all of our panelists and we'll start with cashmere but if you were to have the audience take away one thing from this entire presentation what would you want them to know and think about going forward I'll just restate these opportunities are for you and um the biggest thing is command the language no that's awesome um oh and also proofread things that's always useful friends um and so with that brandon what about you do you have any large takeaway that you really would like our audience to have um as the one thing to keep in mind going forward I would say you know as I've said before own your narrative um become comfortable with it talk to other people about their experiences abroad and that'll help you think through your narrative as well and apply no I think that one of the biggest things that um you sometimes see especially when you're talking to undergrads is you psych yourself out thinking maybe maybe this year I'm applying too late and the just apply really really goes a long way in terms of opening up those doors um but what about you Alsace what are what are the big kind of takeaways we still have a few minutes that you tell all of your students and you would tell our entire audience of how to think about these opportunities going forward yes I would say to articulate your dream in writing so if you have any of you have a piece of paper and a pen or your cell phone or whatever you can transcribe something on right now write today's date I like to timestamp things you can timestamp it with the time and say today right now I want to it might be blank so I want to apply for the critical language scholarship I want to learn Spanish at the intermediate level in two years I want to talk to professor I've been nervous to talk about so those are going to be the small steps if you have your big dream go ahead and say that so if you know hey I want to run for elected office one day say it write it down and send that to yourself if you are writing on a piece of paper take a picture of it email it to yourself and refer to that and I would say for those who are actually working on an application effectively go ahead and call that draft one because guess what you are going to need to tell the reader what your big dream is so you need to make sure you've written that down so that they can get excited about your goals and invest in you because this money is out here for you if you are willing to reach out and tell people why you will be able to help them further their goals of helping Americans gain these skills so write down your big dream write it out don't just say it write it down make it real and call that draft one and that is your first step forward and keep moving perfect well I'll say that I couldn't ask for better ending you've inspired me to want to go write down new dreams and things like that but to all of our panelists thank you so much for sharing your wisdom your expertise your journeys with the audience and so to everybody out there in the audience go get out there apply study abroad this is for you these opportunities are for you and take a page out of Elsace's book and write down your dreams and say them out loud thank you all so much for coming and enjoy the HBCU foreign policy seminar and our slides will be available on the website when we're all done thanks so much