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Alumni Achievements

Additional Alumni Achievements


Featured Alum
Amanda Martinez, '07
Majors: Spanish and Speech Communication

Current position: Graduated with distinction from the University of Bedfordshire, in England, with a master's degree in intercultural communications and works in London as a cross-cultural trainer and researcher at Global Excellence, a business development company.

Why Whitworth? "Upon reading the class descriptions for my majors, I found all of them fascinating and couldn't wait to enroll. I also knew I wanted to study abroad, but didn't know where, and Whitworth offered opportunities in more than 100 different countries. In addition, it was far away from where I grew up, and I believed I needed to distance myself from my hometown to allow myself to grow into my own person apart from my childhood friends."

Whitworth Activities: "I was only on campus for two academic years, so my involvement in campus activities was minimal. However, I was a member of the international club, and I lived in the Global Safari Theme House, which hosted cultural activities for the Whitworth student body."

Quote: "Not only did Whitworth give me the theoretical background and academic experience that I needed to go on to postgraduate school and work in the field of intercultural communications and training, but it also gave me the practical experience that I needed. Through being a teaching assistant for Spanish and Intercultural Communications, through leading Spanish labs and tutoring Spanish students, and through an internship at a multicultural business, I was able to build up practical experience that I could include in my resume, which helped me to get where I am today."

Influential Whitworth experience: "My major life-changing experience didn't actually occur on the Whitworth campus, but rather during a year-long study abroad in Spain through the ISEP program at Whitworth. I'm eternally grateful to Whitworth for providing the opportunity to study abroad, not only because the experience gave me the practical learning I needed, but also because it opened my eyes to the world and how I fit into it. I feel like I found myself in Spain."

Career Goals: "After getting married next year, my husband and I are planning to move to South America to teach English for six months before moving on to another foreign country, where I hope to continue working in people development, but who knows? If there's anything I learned during my time at Whitworth, it's that anything can happen."


Here's what some Whitworth graduates are doing with their modern languages degrees:

• Brad Hoine, '09, is taking chemistry courses with native French speakers in Nice, France; he plans to apply to graduate schools to earn a master's degree in French.
  
  
• Jessica Kidwell, '08, teaches English in France for the French government and is applying to graduate schools to study in the field of dual-language development.
  
  

• Lindsey Kiehn, '07 (French, international studies and cross-cultural studies majors), won a Fulbright English Teaching Fellowship and teaches English in Korea.
  

• Sarah (Sage) Miller, '07, is serving for a year with Campus Crusade for Christ in Venezuela. She is currently deciding whether to spend another year in Venezuela or to attend graduate school in Spain.
  
  
• Hanna Dufford, '06, is serving in the Peace Corps in Guatemala, where she works as a youth promoter, empowering youth in rural communities in the areas of leadership, self-esteem, vocation and small-business management.
  
  
• Matt Krieger, '06, is enrolled in the School of Dentistry at the University of Las Vegas, where he works with patients who speak only Spanish and serves as an interpreter for his classmates.
  
  

• Heather (Stout) Svanidze, '05, earned a master’s degree in political science at George Washington University and is a research assistant at the United States Institute of Peace.

• Nissana Nov, ’08, has been accepted to master’s in social work programs at both Columbia University and the University of Chicago.

• Won Hye Lee, '04, participated as an exchange student from Korea in Whitworth's 2004 France Study Program; he is now enrolled in the MBA program at the Yale School of Management.

• Jessica Gawryn, '08 (French and political science double major), is earning a master's degree in political science in France, where she is also studying Arabic.

• Stephanie Kreuter, '07 (Spanish and international business double major), is interning with the accounting department of Agros International, in Seattle.

• Jordan Sand, '06 (Spanish and biochemistry double major), received a $300,000 Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Graduate Scholarship to earn an M.D. at the University of Washington School of Medicine; he will then earn a master's degree in public health.

• Valin Simonsen, '05, is a teaching assistant in French classes at a school in England.

• Kelly Roberts, '03 (French and English double major), taught English in a French elementary school in St. Cloud, France, as part of a study-abroad master's-degree program in Paris offered through Middlebury College, in Vermont.