With a boost from faculty, students go abroad to do research

Three students who were in France and Sweden this past summer certainly put the “study” in study abroad.

Karla Collazo '27 (career goal: high school French teacher) spent six weeks living in Dijon with a host family and taking university language classes.

Madelyn Garrigan '26 (career goal: public health) worked as an intern with a nonprofit in Stockholm that provides HIV testing, support and education.

Moira Baggot '26 (career goal: possibly medical ethics) started a project while in Stockholm to compare Swedish and American health systems.

In addition to a $2,000 Augie Choice grant, all three received extra funds for the expense of studying abroad.

Collazo, with the help of Dr. Kiki Kosnick, won a competitive $4,000 national scholarship from the American Society of the French Academic Palms, specifically for future teachers of French. "This was the first time I have recommended a student for this particular award, and I'm thrilled — but not surprised — that Karla was selected," said Dr. Kosnick, associate professor of French.

Garrigan and Baggot, along with their sponsor Dr. Lena Hann, all received grants from the William F. Freistat Center at Augustana for their 10 weeks abroad. Dr. Hann, associate professor and chair of public health, supervised the students' projects and continued her own research, from when she was in Sweden as a Fulbright Scholar from June 2023-January 2025.

French and more French

Collazo, a junior from Carpentersville, Ill., has known since eighth grade she wants to be a teacher, and as a junior in high school, she realized teaching French was for her.

She chose Augustana for its French teaching program.

“I was able to come here for a visit, and I was able to meet the French professors," Collazo said. "When I talked to them, I felt like I was at home, and I was going to be well-rounded in the French language and culture.”

She also learned that there would be a trip to France in the summer of 2025.

“So I was always aware of that in the back of my head: How will I fund to go to this program? That's where the scholarships really came in handy, and I was able to basically go for free because I paired the scholarship with Augie Choice.”

She had enough facility in French to be comfortable with her host family, because her language classes have been centered around the vocabulary of everyday life. Classes in Dijon concerned higher level vocabulary and grammar.

Collazo is minoring in Spanish, which she learned at home, and she also has a Seal of Biliteracy in Spanish. So she is open to the possibility of teaching high school Spanish as well as French.

She’d like to teach in her hometown. “That would be awesome,” she said.

Teaming up for Sweden

Garrigan and Baggot went to Sweden together because both had indicated they would like to do an internship abroad.

“Actually, this came into fruition because the first day of my junior year I went in to talk to Dr. [Adam] Kaul from the sociology anthropology department about how I had no clue what I wanted to do for my internship,” Garrigan said.

He encouraged her to “think big.” So she did, and she thought of Sweden because she had been interested in the Swedish health care system since writing an essay about it in ninth grade.

Dr. Kaul pointed her to Dr. Hann and also advised her to contact CORE, where advisor Beth Ford helped put the pieces together for the internship. Dr. Hann suggested that she, Garrigan and Baggot apply for a Freistat student-faculty grant for Sweden.

Garrigan is a senior from Bartlett, Ill., majoring in public health as well as sociology and anthropology, with minors in biology and women, gender, and sexuality studies.

She had a six-week internship at Noaks Ark Stockholm, an organization that provides community support and testing for free to people living with HIV/AIDS in Stockholm. She was asked to write a grant for Noaks Ark that was submitted to Gilead, a center for disease research. This grant would fund a study on the attitudes of Swedes towards home testing and self-sampling for HIV. Sweden has no official legislature on these types of testing for HIV, which makes it unavailable for most people to utilize, she said.

"I learned that I am passionate about helping the communities that need it the most, and think that I would thrive in an NGO," Garrigan said. "This experience has caused me to challenge my initial beliefs, and bring back ideas that can hopefully help make the U.S a better, more just, place."

Garrigan also took a beginners Swedish class in the morning for four hours, followed by a three-hour Swedish history class. "I feel like learning the language made me feel more at home in Sweden," she said. "I went from barely knowing any Swedish, to being able to order meals and make small conversation over the span of the three weeks."

It also didn't long for Garrigan to appreciate Sweden's cafe culture. "When people go to a cafe, they sit down and enjoy whatever they get," she explained. "This also reflects Sweden’s society as a whole. It made me think of the United States and the drive-thru culture we have.  

"I found that I was so much happier and stress-free when I allowed myself to truly live without feeling like there was something else I should be doing. This also allowed me to gain a new patience."

Baggot, a senior from Chicago majoring in philosophy and public health with minors in biology and ethics, signed on to the trip after learning about the possibilities that Sweden offered. Although an internship in medical ethics was not available, she started research for a comparative essay about Swedish and U.S. health care.

In talking with Swedish health care providers, she learned that their attitudes can be different than their U.S. counterparts. In Iowa, for example, a proposed law would exempt doctors from providing medical services that they say violates their conscience.

Baggot said a Swedish doctor’s response to that was, “Well, if you have a job, you do your job. Your job is to help people and provide health care, so you provide the health care.”

This fall she is looking for an internship to follow up on her experience. There are many possibilities she’s considering: a job with the Girls and Boys Club of the Mississippi Valley, or perhaps something more science-related, or the creation of an education program about brain injury.

She’s also thinking about someday taking a job in Sweden.