Two international students from the University of Minnesota system have been awarded the Josef Mestenhauser Student Award for Excellence in Campus Internationalization. An undergraduate student from the Crookston campus and a graduate student from the Twin Cities campus were formally recognized at a ceremony on April 30. This award is given to students for outstanding contributions to international education and acknowledges important work being done by students at the University of Minnesota to internationalize the curriculum and campus.

Four international students at the University of Minnesota have been awarded the Colonial Dames of America scholarship.

The scholarship, offered by the National Society of Colonial Dames of America, is for current graduate and professional degree-seeking international students who plan to further their careers and make impacts in their home country.

The 2025 recipients are:

The latest issue of Global U, the GPS Alliance e-newsletter for alumni, donors, and friends, is out now. The issue includes:

Two students from the Twin Cities campus and two students from the Crookston campus of the University of Minnesota have been awarded The Josef Mestenhauser Student Award for Excellence in Campus Internationalization. This award recognizes outstanding student contributions to international education. It acknowledges important work being done by students at the University of Minnesota to internationalize the curriculum and campus.

Marta Hardardottir saved her fun, interesting college classes for her year abroad at the University of Minnesota.

“Statistics, methodology, social theories — I can take that at home,” Marta said. 

Here, she’s focused on classes examining race, inequality, social movements, international law, and gender studies.

“The teachers are all insanely good at what they do,” Marta said. “There are a lot of discussion-based classes so you get to talk and get to know people.”

Marta has always wanted to study somewhere outside Iceland. 

Three Twin Cities campus students recently received the University’s Josef Mestenhauser Student Award for Excellence in Campus Internationalization for their outstanding contributions to international education. While the award is open to all students, this year each of the recipients is an international student.

The 2022 recipients—Rawan Ibrahim Algahtani, Basel M. El Mrawed, and Nisma Elias—participated extensively in University organizations and committees that contributed to the internationalization of the curriculum and campus. 

Bolli Steinn Huginsson, an exchange student from the University of Iceland, spent the fall 2021 semester at the University of Minnesota. He is finishing his philosophy degree in Reykjavik this semester.

Why did you want to study abroad?

Developing literacy in a language is more than just learning to write, speak, and understand, according to Rachel Dodson, a graduate instructor of German at the University of Minnesota. Using language texts to develop cultural knowledge is also key.

Dodson came to this realization after attending a summer institute, “Foreign Language Literacies: Using Target Language Texts to Improve Communication,” hosted by the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) in 2021. 

“This internship wasn’t something I ever thought I’d have a chance to do. If COVID had never happened and it had been in person, I wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity.”

The COVID-19 pandemic caused more than 1,000 University of Minnesota study abroad students to return home early in the spring 2020 semester and squashed plans for learning abroad over the summer. But that didn’t mean an end to all international experiences.

“I very strongly believe that the reason why we’re not on Mars, we’re not actually expanding humankind outside planet earth, is not because of technical reasons. I think it has to do with more so business and economic and social problems.”

Lucas Bagno has seen both the best and the worst economic situations in Brazil—a unique perspective he can share in his classes at the Carlson School of Management.