Connections Abroad
Killam Fellows Connect AU with Canada
Heather Desserud
Most everyone in academia has heard of the Rhodes Scholarship, which sends talented students to Great Britain, or the Fulbright Program, which sends American scholars overseas and brings overseas scholars to the United States.
Last year, Canada launched the Killam Fellowships Program, through which U.S. and Canadian undergraduates receive generous scholarships to study in the neighboring country for a semester or full year. Due to the efforts of AU’s Center for North American Studies, AU is one of a small number of universities selected to participate.
In August 2004, Heather Desserud arrived on campus as AU’s first Killam Fellow. She was chosen to compete for the fellowship from among the top students at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. While the program decides the placement, she was pleased to get her top choice of AU, where she can enjoy D.C.’s museums and cosmopolitan atmosphere for the 2004–05 academic year.
In the classroom, Heather is pursuing her interest in medieval literature and working with medieval specialist Larissa Tracy, a visiting faculty member from Dublin’s Trinity College. Heather is also studying Americans and America. “I was a bit nervous in coming down,” Heather said. “Canadians often think Americans as rude, but I’ve found that everyone’s been very friendly.”
Another Canadian student, Theresa Enright from McMaster University in Ontario, has joined Heather at AU this spring. Lauren Walls, a sophomore International Business/CLEG (Communications, Legal Institutions, Economics, and Government) major, is the first AU student to go to Canada through the exchange. She is studying U.S.-Canada trade policy at the University of Ottawa this semester.
For more information, visit www.killamfellowships.com/. Students interested in applying should contact Sara Dumont, AU Abroad director, at dumont@american.edu.
Adapted from an American Weekly article, Nov. 16, 2004.
