A summer with RISE

Helen Tauc and Aniruddh Patel are two out of 300 Undergraduates every year from the U.S., Canada and UK, who discover Germany as scholarship holders of the RISE program.

RISE was just the beginning, says Helen Tauc 

After my experience as a RISE intern at the University of Ulm during the summer of 2007, I left Germany reluctantly and was anxious to come back again. Throughout my internship I became good friends with my colleagues in the lab and we stayed in close contact after I left. Additionally, I met many other RISE program participants, German and international students during my various travels around Germany with whom I also still talk to today.  

Not only did I enjoy traveling, meeting new people and living in Ulm, but I also loved the work in the lab and wanted to continue with it. Thus, after the summer of 2007 when I returned to the States, I looked for various scholarships that would enable me to go back to Ulm after I graduated from my home university, the University of Oregon. The summer before my senior year, I applied for these scholarships, one of which was the DAAD Graduate Independent Study Scholarship.

After months of apprehension, I finally received news that I had been accepted for the DAAD scholarship for the year 2009-10. I was and still am incredibly excited! This scholarship enabled me to go back to Ulm for ten months and work in the same lab on a research project and also take a couple of graduate courses through the university. I have now returned to Ulm and I am once again embarking on a rigorous and fun adventure. I am not only very excited, but I am also very grateful for all the opportunities that the DAAD has provided me. I feel as though my summer RISE internship in 2007 opened the door to so many international opportunities both academic and professional that I would have never dreamed of chasing after before.

Unfortunately, the DAAD is not well known at my university. In fact, I did not apply for the RISE program through my university at all; I actually applied independently, and only afterwards did I realize that my university had a DAAD coordinator. However, after my RISE internship I advertised the RISE program in little ways through my job as a freshman advisor/resident assistant at the University of Oregon, and I encouraged my interested friends to apply. The DAAD has so much to offer and I hope that in the future it will become more recognized by Oregon students.

When I came back to the States after my RISE internship, I was also very motivated to continue to work on my German language skills. Unfortunately, there was absolutely no room to take second year German in my schedule. Currently, I am taking an online German course and will also take weekly German lessons through the University of Ulm. Furthermore, I try to speak German with my friends as often as I can, although many times they want to practice their English with me. However, I have definitely improved my German in the past month that I have lived here and I am looking forward to improving it even more throughout the year.

Total immersion, states Aniruddh Patel

I participated in the RISE program during the summer of 2008 and it was a wonderful experience. In addition to working in a different laboratory environment, I enjoyed participating in everyday life and activities, and I readily immersed myself in the culture of modern Germany. Since then, I have completed my undergraduate studies at Washington University in St. Louis with majors in biochemistry and anthropology and my experience in Germany gave me the motivation to complete my minor in German by finishing up final coursework during my senior year.

Being in Germany and speaking German in my lab as well as in everyday life helped me become immersed in the language and gain confidence in my abilities. Before my internship, I was comfortable with writing and listening, and after the internship, I became more at home with the reading and speaking aspects of the language. During my internship, I had the wonderful opportunity to travel all around Germany and its surrounding countries as my home base was Berlin. I was able to become very familiar with the European style of public transportation, and my travels only whetted my appetite for Europe. This past summer, I returned with my parents and we further explored central and southern Europe. I have made friends of my mentors in the lab I interned in.

When I returned to school after my internship, I talked about my great experiences in the program with my professors and classmates. Subsequently, I coached another student through the application process and he was a RISE scholar in Leipzig this past summer; another student I coached will be applying this year. The German department now strongly encourages the science students studying German to apply.

Currently I am a first year medical student at the Yale University School of Medicine.

Link: More details about the RISE program.