Alumni and Careers

What have you been up to since graduating from Bowdoin?

Since graduating from Bowdoin in 2024, I have been in Austria working as a US Teaching Assistant through Fulbright Austria. This past year, I worked at two schools in a small town called Voitsberg in Styria, and next year, I will be teaching at two schools in Graz, the second biggest city in Austria. It has been incredibly rewarding and enriching to be able to work in another country and share with students and teachers my culture and life experiences while also learning about theirs.

Why German? What drew you to the major/minor and how has it shaped your path?

I initially started learning German online during the COVID-19 Pandemic, mostly to fill time during the transition from high school to college, and decided to continue that language-learning journey going into Bowdoin. Although I initially just wanted to learn the language, it was the culture and the people that continued to fuel my interest. Through the classes at Bowdoin, I learned a lot about the societal challenges, contemporary and past, that exist in the German-speaking world, and I was given the opportunity to reflect on how that compares with my immediate world. Going into college, I never anticipated that my journey would lead me to live in a new country.

What have you been up to since graduating from Bowdoin?

After graduating, I worked in Dortmund, Germany as a Fulbright ETA, primarily teaching English as a second language, supporting German language learning, coaching a lacrosse team, and engaging students in art and sports activities, including a ski trip to the Italian Alps. The following year, I worked in Berlin as a research fellow on Project NOHATE, applying methods from my senior thesis in a German-speaking and culturally immersive environment. I then pursued a master’s in computational social science at the University of Chicago, focusing on improving my technical abilities in natural language processing while still working on socially impactful projects. I now work as a software engineer at UpContent, a content discovery and recommendation platform specializing in machine learning and natural language processing.

Why German?

I studied German because I had taken it in high school and was proficient, though nervous, when I arrived at Bowdoin. Professor Jens Klenner encouraged me to take my first upper-level German course during my first semester, a small, immersive seminar where I was able to speak German with proficient classmates. That experience boosted my academic confidence and gave me the courage to engage deeply with language and culture. I eventually pursued majors in German and mathematics/computer science, which allowed me to combine analytical and computational skills with literary and cultural analysis. For my senior thesis, I applied natural language processing techniques to a corpus of German newspaper articles, bridging both fields. Studying German taught me to take risks, embrace challenges, and persist, which has shaped both my academic and professional journey.

Are there any classes, professors, or experiences that had a lasting impact on you?

My first-year seminar, How to Read A Million Books with Professor Crystal Hall, introduced me to computational text analysis. Birgit Tautz served as my advisor from day one and provided guidance and support throughout my four years at Bowdoin. Studying abroad in Berlin was also transformative, giving me an immersive experience with German language, culture, and history, which reinforced both my academic confidence and my global perspective.

What advice would you give to current students or recent graduates interested in your field?

Be academically empowered and embrace courses that trigger your creativity, especially if they are outside your major. I also suggest letting go of the idea of a “dream job.” It can be helpful to focus on fields or types of work that interest you, but stay open to exploring different opportunities. Life and careers are iterative, and experimenting with different roles helps you learn what you enjoy and what you don’t. Staying curious and inspired will guide you toward meaningful opportunities, even if they come unexpectedly.

Chester Eng

In addition to becoming fluent in another language, learning German taught me to think, write, and speak more creatively and articulately. I have been able to discover and to go to more places, both literally and metaphorically, because I studied German at Bowdoin. I feel more enlightened and intellectually capable because of the skills, knowledge, and love of learning that the German Department helped me to discover, develop, and deepen during my four years at the College.

One pleasantly surprising practical way German has benefited me recently is that my knowledge of the language has helped me to communicate and to connect with Kosovars when I cannot do so in English or Albanian. A considerable number of Kosovars speak German because they have lived and worked in German-speaking countries before.

About Ben

While Ben admits that most of his business contacts in Europe can speak English, he claims that “the true value I got from my German studies [at Bowdoin] went beyond language.” That value, he contends, had to do with learning about the historical and ideological contexts of the works he studied in German. “German at Bowdoin was about learning to think like the great German thinkers of history and today, with the language being a tool to truly understanding them.”

Ben highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the German major and fondly remembered how it allowed him to research and write a successful honors project (with Birgit Tautz) that “put a cultural spin on the economic and geopolitical aspects of 19th-century Sino-German relations.”

“German was basically three majors in one: the German language, German literature, and the German philosophical perspective on the world.” The latter component of the German major, Ben argues, is the one that “helps me every day in my work: The ability to take on another’s perspective on something very complex. Sure, I may not speak
German as often as I would like, but every day I need to see what I'm doing from the perspective of a software developer in Malaysia, a salesperson in South Africa, or indeed a businessman in Germany and
then take their interests to heart in the programs I'm building. My experience in the German department at Bowdoin is what gave me the foundation I need to do this successfully.”

What Marta is doing now:

Marta is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Sociology at the Freie Universität (Free University) in Berlin, Germany and is working as a research assistant at the Communications Studies Institute at the University and as a research assistant at the Experts’ Council on German Foundations for Integration and Migration. The latter position helps her to utilize both her Arabic and her German language skills.

Here’s Marta in her own words, discussing her current position and its role in the recent wave of migration to Europe from Arab countries:

“The research division of the interdisciplinary Experts' Council both supports the work of the Council and produces original research on many aspects of integration and migration in Germany. I am an assistant in a qualitative study investigating the situation of refugees who are in the early stages of their asylum application. My most significant responsibility involves organizing and coordinating the interviews with asylum seekers from six different countries of origin, residing in three federal states, in both urban and rural environments. Aside from that, I conduct literature research, compile information in several languages to hand out to refugees, translate presentations, coordinate travel, transcribe interviews and undertake a wide variety of ad hoc tasks as they arise. It has been extremely rewarding to be able to direct my time and energy to a project that highlights the refugees' own voices by letting them speak about the successes and challenges of their first steps in Germany. The job is fast-paced and sometimes linguistically demanding, but I feel supported and appreciated by my team. Above all, knowing that the study's results will be used to form concrete proposals for political actors and other stakeholders to improve the lives of refugees in Germany continues to motivate me to keep doing my best.”

As for how her study of German at Bowdoin shaped her post-graduate life, Marta says:
“I literally owe my post-grad life to the Bowdoin German Department!

What David is doing now:

At AlphaSights, I worked on over 80 cases spanning multiple countries and industries. Though most Analysts/Associates only work within their teams, I had the opportunity to engage with several teams across the firm as one of the only German speakers in the office. As part of the Associate role, employees are required to engage industry experts to gather insights and market data, and having German skills was essential for many manufacturing and healthcare related projects. Using my German language skills, I was able to engage experts and gather insights that would have otherwise been impossible to obtain.