The City of Burlington and surrounding communities Burlington are part of a nationwide network dedicated to breaking through social, cultural, and economic barriers so previously interrupted lives can flourish. Students of German and Russian have plenty of opportunities to provide tutoring and translation services for members of the greater Burlington community, including refugees and recent immigrants. With the assistance of faculty mentors, many UVM students have also UVM students also developed internships abroad.
In Europe
During summers or study abroad semesters, students participate in internships with educational institutions, corporations, publishers, and the non-profit sector in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Recent examples include the Congress/Bundestag exchange and Hochschule für Forstwirtschaft in Rottenberg.
In Russia
Russian students can participate in a study abroad internship program in Russia: the University of Arizona Internship program in St. Petersburg, where students attend language classes in the morning and work in Russian businesses in the afternoon and evening. UVM students in our department have recently completed internships at The Moscow Times, the Center for Economic and Social Research in Warsaw, American Embassy in Moscow; the consulate of Kyrgyzstan and the U.S. State Department.
Immersive Experience in Vienna
For a student with dual majors in German and Linguistics, senior Emma Roach’s 2019 summer destination couldn’t have been more ideal. She worked as an intern at Nativy Translations in Vienna, Austria, assisting sales and project management teams for the online agency that employs thousands of translators all over the world. “My tasks included prospecting for new clients, checking the qualifications of translators, teaching new interns, and testing software,” she says. “I also took time time to explore Vienna and Austria, and other parts of Europe.” The work environment in Nativy is intensively international and multilingual—she worked with colleagues from Austria, the U.S., Iran, Ukraine, Tunisia and Lithuania. While in Vienna, Emma also learned about the Austrian dialect of German, and Viennese culture, which will be especially relevant to her Honors thesis next year: translating a book from German to English (Superheldinnen by Barbi Marković). “Funny enough, the setting for the book is right where my apartment in Vienna was located,” she says. Emma has her sights set on a career as a translator, so her internship with Nativy gave her direct work experience. “Doing an internship abroad has benefitted me in personal and professional ways that I never could have imagined.”
From Red Square to Washington D.C.
From the Red Square in Moscow and frozen Lake Baikal in Siberia to the nation’s capital in D.C., Emily Bruggeman’s double majors in political science and Russian language studies are quite literally taking her places. The 2020 UVM graduate is now in Washington, D.C., for a coveted internship researching U.S.-Russian foreign policy issues at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. An accomplished scholar and debate competitor, Bruggeman describes her time at UVM not by debate wins, grades or experiences abroad, but by the people she met along the way; like the female inmates she coached at the only women’s prison in Vermont on their public speaking skills, or her serendipitous friendship with a lottery-assigned roommate, Caroline; and Professor Kat Scollins from the Russian Department. “All future students who grace her classroom are beyond fortunate; it will be hard to find another professor like Kat!” she says of Scollins, whose guidance she sought from her first semester at UVM. “The mark of an excellent professor, though, is someone who offers guidance beyond the academic. Professor Scollins filled that role tremendously as a reliable advisor to turn to when things got hectic or uncertain.”