College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

• International excellence

  Undergraduate Carrie Carlson honored with LAS 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 first studied German in high school.
  
  Carlson also is excelling in the language at Iowa State, enough that she was honored with the 2008 LAS Student International Excellence Award.
  
  Carlson, 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. The latter trip was funded by a scholarship she earned from the cultural arm of the German government.
  
  Both experiences perfected her language skills and her understanding and appreciation of the German culture.
  
  Carlson 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," Carlson said. "It's still an interest with me. But I had to acknowledge that it wouldn't be a career."
  
  Now Carlson plans to do her digging in libraries and field sites that contain antiquities other than dinosaur remains.
  
  "I'm really interested in linguistic anthropology and archeology," Carlson 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.
  
  Carlson volunteered for three weeks in archaeological field work 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 field work for up to a half year - and get paid.
  

Carrie Carlson

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April 14-27, 2008

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