UNL's Laura Peters earns Fulbright to return to Germany

            Laura Peters, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate student in modern languages and literatures, has been awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Scholarship to Germany for the 2014-2015 academic year.

            Peters said she is "absolutely ecstatic" about being awarded a Fulbright, something she said she hoped to achieve from the moment she first heard of the award years ago.

            Through the Fulbright, Peters will return to Germany to teach German students English as an assistant in an English classroom while deepening her understanding of the German language and further cultivating her interest in German and European culture. Peters has traveled to and lived in Germany before and said she made good friends and memories in the process.

            Peters also hopes to share American culture with her students and community by offering American swing dance lessons and socials. She said she believes that dance and music are strong foundations upon which cross-cultural relationships can be built. Depending on where she is placed in Germany, Peters said she looks forward to either joining an already thriving swing dance scene or creating a scene on her own.

            When Peters returns to the United States, she said she and her fiance plan to move to New Hampshire, where she hopes to receive a lecturer position and teach German at a university, sharing her passion for the German language and culture with new generations of students.

            Peters' is the fifth Fulbright announced to UNL students this spring.

            The Fulbright Program, established in 1946 and funded by the U.S. Department of State, is designed to foster understanding between the United States and other countries. The U.S. Student Fulbright program gives recent graduates, graduate students and young professionals the opportunity to conduct research, study, or teach in one of the 155 designated countries. About 8,000 grants are awarded annually, and about 1,600 of those grants are awarded to U.S. students.