Three picked for prestigious German program
About five years ago, Alexandra Summerlin and her family headed to Washington, D.C., to attend Passport D.C., a monthlong event where all the embassies open their doors to the public.
At the block party-style event, complete with food and entertainment, the 10-yearold Alexandra stumbled across a booth at the German Embassy highlighting a program called Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange. Alexandra’s mom, Natalya Stepanova, was told her daughter had to be 15 to apply.
“We all thought it was a very good opportunity and that day we said, ‘When she’s old enough we will apply,’ ” said Stepanova, a former exchange student herself who is originally from Turkmenistan.
Fast-forward to today. Summerlin, a Crofton resident, along with two other students from Anne Arundel County have been selected from a nationwide pool of applicants to experience a new culture and learn a language through a full-immersion experience in Germany through the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange.
The selections this year from Anne Arundel County are Summerlin, a junior at Crofton High School; Olivia Hurd, a 16-year-old sophomore from Annapolis High School; and Emerson Sprinkle, a 16-year-old junior from Millersville who attends McDonogh School in Owings Mills.
In August, the girls will say goodbye to their families for a monthlong language course before living with a sponsor family in Germany for nine months.
“I’m very excited to get this opportunity,” Summerlin said. “For me, it will be great to connect with some of my German roots. I have German citizenship already, but I’ve lost the language a bit, so it will be cool to pick it back up.”
The Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange,
or CBYX, was established in 1983 as a way to strengthen ties between Germany and the United States through citizen diplomacy. The program is jointly funded by the U.S. Congress and the German Bundestag, the country’s national parliament, and overseen by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
The program makes as many as 250 scholarships available to high school students across America annually. Admission rates aren’t published for the competitive program, but as of this year, more than 26,000 students have prepared themselves for a global world through the program, according to its website.
The scholarship covers round-trip travel to Germany, medical benefits, lodging and meals, tuition, academic costs, transportation and other expenses.
Applicants must be high school students between the ages of 15 and 18½ with a GPA of 2.5 or higher. Having a connection to Germany or speaking the language is not a requirement for being selected, though being interested in learning the language is. Neither Hurd nor Sprinkle speaks German.
While the exchange program will give the participants a new perspective on global affairs and German social, economic and political life, it can be daunting to live abroad for so long.
“I take school very seriously,” Hurd said. “I always try to do my best, but going to school in another language will almost certainly be difficult, at least at first, so that’s the part that’s scary for me.”
Sprinkle said she would miss her friends and family, especially her five sisters and brothers, whom she’s around so much. Leaving them behind will be hard, she said.
“I’m going to miss my family,” she said. “The full immersion process guidelines say we can’t call more than once every two weeks, so that will take some getting used to. They just want to make sure we are locked in to embracing where we are.”
The students will forgo a year of American high school to embark on this journey, meaning they will also miss activities.
“I’m involved in theater at my school,” Hurd said. “I just saw the play list for next year and they are doing ‘The Little Mermaid’ and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ I’m sorry I will miss that.”
All in all, this is a chance of a lifetime for these students that will likely benefit them in their academic careers and beyond. Summerlin wishes more students would take advantage of opportunities like this.
“My interview group was actually really small,” she said. “I think this is going to be really fun, not just because I’m taking a gap year and going on vacation, but also helping relations between countries. We will get to meet other young people that we could become really close with. I think that is cool.”