As a first-generation and American immigrant from Bali, Cameroon, “home” has always been difficult for Angum Check ’19 to define. Coming to Carolina gave her some insight.
“Being a first-generation American immigrant, I personally struggle with what ‘home’ means. Part of me realizes I’m going to have to create my own ‘home’ so in order to create my own ‘home’ I’m going to have to go back to Cameroon.”
And so she began her quest to travel 8,000 miles to her home continent.
An African, African American, and Diaspora Studies major and a Sean Douglas Leadership Fellow, Angum spends a lot of her time at the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History. At her “first home on campus,” the Undergraduate International Studies Fellowship program provided the opportunity to go home.
“[The UISF program] is very much designed to prioritize students based on need, and that allowed me the opportunity to go abroad” Angum said. “I haven’t been back to the continent since I’ve left because of monetary reasons, and so having the opportunity to go back was very, very emotional.”
She spent her summer in Malawi, and the experience opened her eyes to new possibilities.
“The summer in Malawi program was very life changing. I’m seriously considering academia and eventually pursuing a Ph.D.,” she said.
Back on campus, she stays involved with the diversity and inclusion office as a Martin Luther King Jr. Scholar, and with Achieving Carolina Excellence as co-chair.
When asked about what she would like her legacy at Carolina to be, she named the Stone Center and its fellowships as programs she would like to support.
“I would like to leave my legacy as one of service and one of giving back to programs that gave me opportunities.”
Angum Check was able to study abroad because of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History’s Undergraduate International Studies Fellowship.
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Jenny Suwanmanee ‘21 loves diving headfirst into new situations. The double major in business and global studies made the most of her college experience: studying abroad, seeking out students, faculty and administrators with global interests and creating other opportunities.
Suwanmanee’s penchant for exploring the world was also helped by several scholarships that she earned along the way. She was a two-time recipient of the UNC Employee Forum’s Carolina Family Scholarship, and also received the Edmund B. Ross III Merit Scholarship and two merit scholarships from the business school for study abroad. In summer 2019, she enrolled at Denmark’s Copenhagen Business School and in spring 2020, she took classes from the Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands.
The exposure to how other countries operate and how their citizens think dovetails nicely with Suwanmanee’s global studies focus on Asia and its international politics, nation states and social movements.
“I want to work in the private sector and explore that area more after graduation,” she said. “Global studies is a great addition to business because in today’s world, business touches everything. We’re in such an interconnected world that you have to understand how the world works and how it functions to be a working individual and a person who can help contribute to society.”
Read the complete Carolina Story..."
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A second-generation Vietnamese American, junior Valerie Nguyen feels more connected to her roots than ever after a semester in Carolina’s new Vietnamese language pilot program.
Nguyen’s parents immigrated to the United States as refugees from the Vietnam War, and Nguyen grew up speaking mostly English, slowly losing her connection to her family’s first language. Taking part in the Vietnamese language pilot program has been invaluable as she reconnects with her heritage.
“I learned a lot about my culture and heritage by strengthening my Vietnamese language skills,” she said. “I am now able to communicate with my family and learn about our family history and immigration story. In other words, it has given me back a piece of myself that I thought I would never otherwise find.”
Organized by the Carolina Asia Center and the UNC Study Abroad Office, with support from the Office of the Vice Provost for Global Affairs, Carolina’s Vietnamese language pilot program is allowing students to enroll in introductory Vietnamese language classes at SOAS University of London, which specializes in the study of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Read the Complete Carolina Story..."
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Before the global pandemic struck, UNC-Chapel Hill Hispanic linguistics and global studies major Karla Estrada Perez had planned to study abroad in the summer of 2020. Then, she thought, maybe it would happen in the fall.
When neither worked out due to pandemic travel restrictions, she found she still had an opportunity to experience global learning from the safety of her apartment in Chapel Hill. Perez was one of more than a dozen students who enrolled in online classes with Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador, a longtime Carolina partner university, last fall.
“We saw quickly that we needed to be creative and look for other ways to deliver a global education to our students,” said Heather Ward, associate dean for study abroad and international exchanges. “A lot of the benefit you get from traditional study abroad is to learn from international faculty, scholars and students who you might not encounter on campus at Carolina. Through our strong global partnerships, we can still deliver that benefit through remote courses with faculty and students at those institutions.”
Read the Complete Carolina Story..."
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