College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

International award
Carrie Carlson knows her German. The senior is fluent in the language and admits it came naturally for her.

"I learned it really fast and it just took off for me," said the Minneapolis native who began taking German in high school. She also is excelling in the language at Iowa State, enough that she was honored with the 2008 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Student International Excellence Award.

Her award honors her stellar internationally focused academic work and her commitment to international extra-curricular activities.

Study Abroad in Germany
Carrie, former president of the Iowa State German Club, has had two lengthy stays in Germany: a year during high school in Dachau and a recent thirteen-month study abroad experience in which she attended a university in Bonn on a scholarship from the cultural arm of the German government. The experiences perfected her language skills and her understanding and appreciation of the German culture.

Carrie came to Iowa State as a double major in German and geology. She eventually  switched the geology major to anthropology partly because she's always had a fascination with "digging" into the past.

"I wanted to dig up dinosaurs," Carrie said. "It's still an interest with me. But I had to acknowledge that it wouldn't be a career." Now Carrie plans to do her digging in libraries and field sites that contain antiquities other than dinosaur remains.

Linguistic anthropology
"I'm really interested in linguistic anthropology and archeology," Carrie said. By combining the two, she hopes to someday unveil new knowledge about our past by looking at aspects from languages and verifying them through archaeology.

"By studying archaic languages, I hope to glean bits of culture out of them and learn about those societies then compare that to the archaeological records," she explained.

Carrie volunteered for three weeks in archaeological fieldwork in western Germany while she studied in Bonn. Researchers were digging for Roman, Stone Age and Iron Age relics. When she returns to Germany, she hopes to participate in the fieldwork for up to a half year - and get paid.

Her travels may not stop in Germany. Carrie hopes to venture to Egypt after Iowa State and take part in a paleoanthropological excavation for fossil primates.