Holy Cross Student Earns Prestigious Fulbright Award

WORCESTER, Mass. – Kathleen Derrig ’06, a classics major from Chicago, has received a Fulbright grant to work and study in Germany. A member of the College Honors Program, she will serve as a teaching assistant of English in what is a German equivalent of a high school.

“My job will be to spend about 12 hours each week helping a German teacher in the classroom, as well as holding separate discussion sessions to help students practice their English and learn more about American culture,” Derrig said.

She applied for the Fulbright after developing an appreciation for the German language and culture.

“I began to study German in order to get a head start on a language requirement for a doctorate in classics,” she said. “I attended the summer language immersion program at Middlebury College in 2003 — seven weeks of all German, all the time. After having a great experience there and spending a week in Germany during my year abroad, I really started to enjoy the German language and the culture for their own sake. I decided to apply for the Fulbright Teaching Assistantship Grant in order to gain valuable classroom experience and spend time in Germany.”

Following her Fulbright appointment, Derrig plans to attend graduate school in the classics for the 2007-2008 year. She would like to earn a Ph.D in classics and teach at the college level.

At Holy Cross, Derrig is a tutor at the Writer’s Workshop; a writer and copy editor for The Crusader; member of the Student Coalition on Hunger and Homelessness; and member of Eta Sigma Phi (classics honor society). She will be inducted into Phi Beta Kappa (liberal arts honor society) at the end of the academic year. She spent one semester each in Athens, Greece and Rome.

Each year about 1,000 college students are awarded grants through the Fulbright Program, the U.S. government’s flagship program in international educational exchange. Fulbright grants are made to U.S. citizens and nationals of other countries for a variety of educational activities, primarily university lecturing, advanced research, graduate study and teaching in elementary and secondary schools. Since the program’s inception in 1946, more than 250,000 participants — chosen for their leadership potential — have had the opportunity to observe each other’s political, economic and cultural institutions.