Since 2005, eight of the 21 Dartmouth alumni who interned at the American University in Kuwait through the Dartmouth College-American University of Kuwait Project have received national fellowships and post-graduate scholarships to study Arab culture, media and linguistics in North Africa and the Middle East, according to Laurel Stavis, the project's executive director. Five program alumni received Fulbright Scholarships, Stavis said.
AUK was founded in 2003 through a collaboration with the College, Stavis said. New universities in Kuwait are required by law to partner with an international higher education institution that serves as a mentoring university. The College's liberal arts curriculum served as a model for AUK, Stavis said.
Internships at AUK which are 10 weeks long and are offered during Fall and Spring terms give students the opportunity to work in administrative capacities at the university, Stavis said. In addition to the 21 students who have completed the program, two students are currently in Kuwait this term, she said. The College also hosted 19 students from AUK as summer interns. Many past participants have used their experiences at AUK to help them incorporate their passion for Arab language and culture into their career paths, according to several AUK alumni interviewed by The Dartmouth.
"The internship is a wonderful experience for Dartmouth students to do, whether they're interested in Arabic language or culture," Weston Sager '09, a former AUK intern and Fulbright recipient, said. "Working in another part of world with kids your own age, it's really such a positive experience. It was one of highlights of my Dartmouth experience."
Following graduation, Sager received a Fulbright grant to return to Morocco and continue research on Moroccan journalism that he began as part of his senior thesis.
Jennifer Krimm '06, a former AUK intern and Fulbright recipient, was one of the first two students to participate in the AUK internship when she traveled to Kuwait in Spring 2005.
"I've been interested in the Middle East, especially the media, for many years, before 9/11," she said in an email to The Dartmouth. "The AUK internship gave me the chance not only to continue my studies in government and international relations, but to live and work in the region."
Krimm spent 3.5 years after graduation working as communications director for Rep. Ben Chandler, D-KY, but quit earlier this year to move to Tunisia and blog about the Arab Spring.
"When I heard about the uprisings of the Arab Spring, I knew I had to get involved," Krimm said. "I loved Congress and Washington, but my true passion was and is the Arab world."
Krimm recently began working on a book detailing the lives of women living throughout the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East, she said.
"During my AUK internship, I had the privilege of being in parliament when the government gave Kuwaiti women the right to vote for the first time," she said. "Witnessing this made me realize a major interest of mine working with women in the Arab world."
Daniel O'Brien '09 a former AUK intern and recipient of the China Education Initiative Fellowship, a program similar to Teach for America said that the AUK internship helped foster his interest in the Middle East and international relations theory.
"Because of 9/11, I was very interested in national security issues and the Middle East," he said.
Although O'Brien said he decided to participate in the program partially to avoid enrolling in another Latin course needed to fulfill his language requirement, his experience turned out to be extremely worthwhile. O'Brien currently works at a consulting firm in Washington, D.C., but spent 10 months working at the U.S. Department of Defense, he said.
"I moved to D.C. a year ago," O'Brien said. "The Defense Department looked at my resume at my Arabic and Chinese and time abroad and trained me to be a statistical quantitative analyst."
Edward Kim '09, a former AUK intern and Fulbright recipient, said he enrolled in several anthropology and Arabic courses upon returning to the College. He applied for a Fulbright scholarship to study modernization in the Arab world and social changes occurring in and around Qatar during his senior year at the College.
"Because of new-found oil in the region, I mean within the last 50 years or so, a lot of money is coming into these countries that have historically never been that prosperous before," Kim said. "There is a lot of structural and economic change, and a lot of social change as well, that they might not even realize. People are kind of experiencing it as it is going on."
AUK admitted its first class of students in 2004 and has since become the premier private university in Kuwait, Stavis said. Approximately 2,000 undergraduate students currently attend the university, which is located in the urban center of Kuwait City, she said.
