Alumni Highlights
Stephanie Tanis, German, BS Biomedical Science & German, 2017
Stephanie Tanis
2017 Graduate
Major: Biomedical Sciences and German-Linguistics
Minor: Chemistry
Moin moin! Shortly after graduation, Stephanie enrolled in a Molecular Biology graduate program at the University of Kiel in Kiel, Germany. Although the bulk of the program is taught in English, Stephanie says knowing German opened up so many opportunities. To name a few, she received a student job at her university's International Center due to her German skills and has sat in on German-taught biology courses where there is no English-taught equivalent. Stephanie has also given bilingual lectures to local German high school students on the culture and topography of the Midwest.
Stephanie graduated from her Molecular Biology graduate program in Kiel, Germany in January (2020) after completing her masters thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary biology. She has since enrolled in a Ph.D. program in Genetics at Cornell University! Following graduation from Cornell, she wants to move back to Germany to work in the biotech industry. She's taking advantage of all the German courses offered at Cornell to sit for the C2 language exam.
She is incredibly thankful for the practical training she received as a language student at GVSU. "Without the great professors in the GVSU German Department, I wouldn’t have had the necessary language and cultural skills to start my scientific career in Germany!"
Updated August 2020
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