Scholar Ilse Meiler shares her experience at Smith College

Ilse Meiler, our 2016 scholarship recipient, studied at the University of Geneva with the “Smith in Geneva” program in the spring of 2019 taking courses in Russian language, history and religion, leading to a double major in Russian and Eastern European and Eurasian Area Studies.  She served as President of Lawrence House 2019-20 and was selected as a student fellow with Smith’s Kahn Institute. 

Ilse graduated from Smith virtually in May 2020, and is working as a chemist while she awaits the resumption of entries into the Peace Corps in preparation for an assignment in Kyrgyzstan. She plans to go into the field of translation and simultaneous interpretation with her background in Spanish, French, German, and Russian.

Listen to Ilse herself as she describes winning the scholarship and her experiences at Smith: