The German School at Middlebury College

Andrej Blazhevski is a rising sophomore at CC and you can read about what he is doing in the summer of 2015 here. He is originally from Skopje, Macedonia, and we are thrilled that he picked Colorado College for his bachelor degree. Andrej already knew a few European languages, yet decided to take on another challenge and study a new language during his freshman year. After completing German 101 and 102 in the fall of 2014–the two courses needed to fulfill the foreign language requirement at CC–Andrej was so enthralled with the German language and culture that he applied for the Intensive German Summer Program at Middlebury College. Yes, German can be fun! I was not at all surprised to hear that not only was Andrej accepted into the program but also received a prestigious fellowship through Middlebury’s financial aid office. The German Program, too, created a summer grant to help send Andrej to Vermont, and we cannot wait to hear about his exciting summer! Andrej is very interested in green technologies and sustainable architecture (he is thinking about majoring in the Environmental Program major and perhaps minoring in German–if he has the time). Coincidentally, Germany is a leading force in both of those fields. Moreover, as part of the German summer program, Middlebury is offering a workshop on “Promoting sustainable behavior – how can we identify successful communication strategies?“ taught by CU Boulder’s Dr. Gesa Luedecke from the CIRES Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. With the support of CC’s Sustainability Office, I am also developing a “Green Germany” course to be taught in 2016/17 and I hope to be able to collaborate with Andrej and include him as much as possible in the planning and execution of the course. Did I already mention that Andrej is an outstanding student? He excelled in his language studies. He is also an excellent team player with a great sense of humor who can play the accordion and dance to Latin-American tunes. I’m sure those skills with come in handy at one point! Best of luck and lots of fun in Vermont, Andrej!