Just two months after graduating from the University of Minnesota Morris (UMM) with a double major in Spanish and Latin American area studies, Laura Hoppe, ’16, headed to South America to put her education to work. As a recipient of the Fulbright U.S. Student Award, Hoppe will spend the next year teaching English at a university in Colombia.

Scholarship support gave Hoppe time and flexibility to become deeply involved with the Morris region’s Latino community. She received the Mrs. Theodore S. Long Scholarship, the John Q. Imholte Scholarship, the Ernest Kemble Scholarship, and the David C. Johnson Scholarship. As a volunteer translator and interpreter in Morris’ TERCERO program, she translated school documents into Spanish for parents and interpreted during parent-teacher conferences and medical appointments. Hoppe spent her junior year studying in Guanajuato, Mexico, where she did research on women’s rights.

In Colombia, she plans to launch the Jane Addams Project. This cultural exchange program brings together people who want to practice conversing in a different language in a social setting. “At Jane Addams, we like to say everyone’s a teacher and everyone’s a learner,” says Hoppe, who was a leader in the student-run program at UMM.