Vanderbilt Register:Student receives Fulbright grant for year of study in Germany

Student receives Fulbright grant for year of study in Germany

by Jamie Lawson Reeves
Vanderbilt senior Erica Doerhoff has received a Fulbright Full Grant to study German Romanticism at Tübingen University in Germany for the 1998-99 academic year.

A double major in German and philosophy, Doerhoff is "an unusually gifted student, who is also very even keeled," said Doerhoff's major adviser John McCarthy, professor of German and of comparative literature. The Fulbright Program was created by the U.S. Congress in 1946 to foster mutual understanding among nations through educational and cultural exchanges.

A native of Jefferson City, Mo., Doerhoff said her initial interest in German stems from her family tree. Her family is of German heritage and her grandparents on both her mother and father's side of the family spoke German.

After spending a year in Germany as part of the Fulbright grant, she will enroll in the master's and doctoral programs in German at Cornell University. She plans to pursue a teaching and research career at the university level.

"She was obviously one of the very top candidates in the entire country," said McCarthy. Doerhoff applied to the best German programs at American universities, including Vanderbilt, University of California at Berkeley, Harvard, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Washington University and Indiana University. She was accepted at every university she applied to and received offers for fellowships from all schools.

"German is a difficult field to be going into these days, because of the vast popularity of studying non-Western societies," McCarthy said. "But there will always be room for excellent people in German and I think Erica has a fine career ahead of her. She deserves this. She has worked very, very hard."

Doerhoff, who is graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University on May 8, said she chose Cornell for many reasons. Cornell's German program stood out because "it is a strong department with an interdisciplinary focus," she said.

At Vanderbilt, she is a recipient of a Jesse Wills Scholarship, a four-year full-tuition, merit-based scholarship that includes a stipend for summer study overseas. She was valedictorian of her Helias High School class in Jefferson City, Mo. Her awards have continued throughout her studies at Vanderbilt. In October 1997 she received a scholarship awarded by the national German honorary society, Delta Phi Alpha, which she will use during a semester break during the upcoming academic year in Germany for a study tour in a German-speaking country.

Her interest in philosophy began as a high school sophomore when she took a philosophy course as part of a special governor's school. She has been able to blend her studies in German with her studies in philosophy. At Vanderbilt she has taken several classes in which she has studied German philosophers - from Kant to Nietzsche to Adorno.

Doerhoff said she got a preview of graduate school after taking two graduate seminars in German this year - one on early German Romanticism taught by Assistant Professor of German Laurie Ruth Johnson and "Fin de Siecle" ("End of the Century") taught by Assistant Professor of German Meike Werner. She also has had experience studying in Germany as a participant of the Vanderbilt-in-Germany program in Regensburg, from August 1996 to August 1997. In addition to studying in Germany, she studied overseas in London from July to August 1996 as part of the Humanities-in-London program, a six credit-hour study program focusing on the history, literature and culture of London.

Doerhoff, who has been speaking German fluently for about five years, was able to work on her language skills as a resident of McTyeire International House on campus. She lived in the German hall her sophomore year and was able to converse daily with two native speakers - students from Regensburg. She also worked as a tutor in German at the Learning Center last semester.
"The Department of German is very small but that means there is a lot of interaction between faculty and students," she said. "I have taken some really fascinating classes here."

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