A UI alumna sets her sights on Russia, U.S. State Department, and beyond.
By Denise Cheeseman
A freshman-year general-education course does not usually lead to a career path, but Samantha Korns’ Russian language class did just that.
University of Iowa alumna Korns, a pre-law and international studies major who graduated in 2016, said she picked Russian because she needed to fulfill the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences language requirement and wanted something challenging.
Five years later, Korns will head to the southern Russian province of Astrakhan to be an English Teaching Assistant on a Fulbright scholarship.
“I thought about applying after graduation, but I didn’t have the experience of actually going to Russia, so I took a year off, I went to Russia, and that gave me the perspective and the ability to write as to why I wanted to go back,” she said.
Some might be put off by the recent political scandals involving Russia and the U.S., but not Korns. She said she looks forward to an “interesting time”: the next Russian presidential election and the 2018 FIFA World Cup will both occur during her yearlong appointment.
“When I was in St. Petersburg, the political election was happening, so I was there, and they were asking me about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and there was never a lot of animosity toward that,” she said. “It’s definitely going to be a unique experience being in Russia with students who may be asking me things about Trump or his administration.”
Besides, it would take more than a few hackers to stop Korns, who has endured a long process of writing and rewriting essays, a UI interview, and a final Skype interview with a Russian Fulbright representative in Moscow.
Korns even engaged in mock interviews with Russian Department Professor Margaret Mills to prepare.
“All in Russian of course,” Mills said. She offered criticism each time until Korns “had it down to a science.”
“When she had her interview, she contacted me right away and said she enjoyed it … which I don’t think anyone says about a Skype interview in a foreign language,” Mills said.
If anyone would, it would be Korns, whose confidence and dedication is obvious to Mills.
“[She is] one of the most committed students I’ve taught in over 30 years of teaching, just determined, organized; she’ll do anything to achieve what she sets out to achieve,” Mills said.
Those achievements stretch far beyond the Fulbright program.
“International law is where I see myself before [age] 30,” Korns said. She hopes to put her Russian skills to work with the United Nations or U.S. State Department.
William Reisinger, a UI professor of political science who interviewed Korns at the university level as part of the Fulbright process, said that will prepare Korns well for her next steps.
“One of things that the U.S. government has done in recent years is actually give Fulbright winners a little bit of a leg up if they apply for positions with the U.S. government, because we do, as a country, need more people who have been to other countries, who can speak a foreign language, who have that kind of international experience,” he said.
“I’m excited that, when our two countries are in a state where they don’t like each other very much, that you can have this kind of person-to-person communication,” he said. “I think that’s the best hope we have to improve things down the road.”
