Profile Awesome: Aarilee Lorenzen

Feature image of Perguia from Wikimedia Commons

Congratulations to Aarilee Lorenzen!

We are pleased to announce that Aarilee Lorenzen has been awarded the ICC - Massimo Bonavita Memorial Scholarship. The ICC - Massimo Bonavita Memorial Scholarship helps provide program fees, housing, and airfare for undergraduate University of Minnesota  Italian majors/minors studying abroad and is awarded through the Italian Cultural Center.* We are proud to have ties with the ICC, and continually look forward to finding ways to strengthen those ties, especially through this wonderful opportunity for our students.

About Aarilee

Aarilee is an English literature/anthropology double major with an Italian minor and will be a junior come fall. She was the student assistant for the Department of French and Italian for two years. In that time she helped coordinate student tutoring schedules, facilitated an Italian conversation circle, helped run the Culture Shock blog, and worked on outreach to encourage other students to consider incorporating Italian into their studies. We will feel her absence, but are so excited for her to experience the wonders of Italy!

Plans

Aarilee is looking forward to “meeting people and making friends [and] going on trips on the weekend to explore all around the country.” She plans to study both anthropology and Italian at L'Universita degli Studi di Perugia in the fall. When asked about her response to receiving this scholarship, Aarilee said that believes that she will “be able to enjoy the experience even more now that I don’t have to worry so much about money.” 

As part of her scholarship, Aarilee will be providing short updates and pictures of her time in Italy. When the updates come in, we’ll be sure to share some of them, because seeing through the eyes of actual students studying abroad is a wonderful insight into Italy, studying abroad in general, and what doors Italian can open for those who learn the language and culture.

Inspired by the awards granted to students earlier in May (catch up on those stories here), Profile: Awesome sets out to highlight the achievements, awards, and other updates about life, studying abroad, scholarly activities, and teaching practices within the Department of French and Italian.

*Founded in 2006, the Italian Cultural Center of Minneapolis/St. Paul is an independent, non-political, non-profit 501(c)(3) organization open to all people in Minnesota.  We promote the knowledge, understanding and appreciation of Italian language and culture through educational and cultural events in the greater Twin Cities area.