3/31/2009 - Two Bridgehampton students to spend summer abroad
By Caroline Simson for
The Southampton Press
Just two months ago, two students at the Bridgehampton School were expecting to spend their summers the same way as most of their classmates: going to the beach, making taking up a summer job and probably staying around Bridgehampton.
Last week, all that changed when Karen Munoz and Nate Hochstedler learned they had each received scholarships to spend a month abroad. Karen, 17, earned $5,350 to live in the south of France, where she will study French, and Nate, 16, was given $5,000 to live with a host family in Argentina where he will do community service.
“It was kind of indescribable,” said Nate, a sophomore, referring to how he felt when he heard that he had won the scholarship. “Everyone was excited.”
“It’s wonderful,” said Judiann Carmack-Fayyaz, the environmental design program teacher at Bridgehampton. Ms. Carmack-Fayyaz, who learned about the program in January and encouraged her students to apply, gave members of the Bridgehampton School Board the good news at a board meeting on Wednesday, March 25. The scholarship is sponsored by the Ford Partnership for Advanced Studies, “an interdisciplinary curriculum and program that provides students with content knowledge and skills necessary for future success—in such areas as business, economics, engineering, and technology” according to the program’s website, fordpas.org. The program is funded by the Ford Motor Company.
Ms. Carmack-Fayyaz said that to be accepted in the program, students had to complete three essays and submit lengthy applications that took a week to complete. Two of the essays were for students to demonstrate their devotion to community service and leadership capabilities, while a third was a letter to a potential host family, describing himself or herself to the family. Already proficient in Spanish, Nate differentiated himself from the competition by composing his letter to his host family entirely in their native language. On July 1, he’ll be leaving for Argentina, where he’ll spend the next month doing community service. It’s not clear exactly where he’ll be staying at this point, he said, nor the exact type of community service he’ll be doing, though it may involve helping out in an orphanage or teaching soccer to disabled kids.
“I’ve wanted to go to South America for a long time, and this finally gives me the chance,” he explained. “I have a lot of Spanish friends, and I’m intrigued with the culture.”
Karen, a junior, is already fluent in Spanish and English and said she has been wanting to learn a third language for quite a while.
“I wanted to know another language … and I wanted to go to Europe,” she said.
As a result of her perseverance, Karen learned last week that she would be leaving for Centre Méditerranéen d’Etudes Françaises, located in the city of Cap D’Ail in the French Riviera, on July 24.
Unlike Nate, she’ll be spending the time taking language classes.
Nate explained that he and Karen were able to choose from a long list of countries they wanted to go to, though ultimately the decision was made for them by Ford PAS based on their abilities and requests.
Ms. Carmack-Fayyaz explained that students at the school became eligible for the program after Bridgehampton was accepted into the Ford PAS in January, and soon afterward, Ms. Carmack-Fayyaz learned about the American Field Service scholarship, where students between the ages of 15 and 20 receive money to go abroad.
“The application was quite demanding and rigorous. These two students were really motivated to go through the process,” she said.
“She pretty much pushed us through it,” Nate said of Ms. Carmack-Fayyaz.
As a requirement of the scholarship, students must write postcards to the Ford Motor Company while they are in their respective countries and essays about their trips once they return home.
If the trips live up to their expectations, that requirement should be the easiest part of the whole experience for Karen and Nate.
Read the original article here
 |
Printer Friendly |
