… and a hearty “Willkommen” to our Winter 2019-2020 Newsletter!

Thanksgiving and the Holidays have come and gone, and again we have much to be thankful for at AYF. 2018-19 was quite a fruitful year with many events and highlights. In September, then, 38 wonderful new AYF students joined us for their adventure in international education, and both alumni club chapters are as engaged, supportive, and active as ever.

AYF Alumni & Gentry Scholarship Awardees 2019 (from left to right): Michelle Edwards (UW), Renu Dabak-Wakankar (UM), Taylor Rasmussen (MSU), and Marisa Rethman (UI)

The first four scholarships for AYF participants have been issued! We are deeply grateful to the JY cohort of 1984-85 for establishing the Gentry Scholarship Fund. And we are equally grateful to the Freiburg-based German chapter (AYF Alumni & Friends) for supporting two current AYFers with scholarships and for tireless efforts to organize events to make our students feel at home and create forums for exchange across JY and AYF generations. Michelle Edwards, one of the four awardees in 201920, reflects on her experience in Freiburg so far in the subsequent post.

In other news, we’d like to:

• bring you last year’s highlights such as pictures from a 20th reunion;
• report on a concert presented by the AYF Quintet with friends of the program;
• portray the winner of the AYF Alumni Achievement Award 2019;
• share a Student Profile;
• and briefly alert you to a podcast in the “Fernweh and Home” series that features AYF.

First and foremost, though, we are looking forward to 2020 which promises to be a year of festivities and celebrations! The City of Freiburg marks its 900-year anniversary with a full year of special events. And, a bit closer to home, the Academic Year in Freiburg turns 60! During the academic year 1960-61, the first group of students was welcomed in the Breisgau by the Junior Year Freiburg, as the program was known at the time. A grand celebration seems in order to properly mark such a momentous occasion, and we have prepared a five-day program of special events for our alumni and friends. If you are intrigued by the idea of feting the program while reliving your history, find out more about the AYF Anniversary Celebration & Reunion 2020 in this newsletter and make sure to fill out the Interest Survey on our website to RSVP.

We are pleased to send you this AYF Newsletter. Two, three times a year, we would like to reach out to all our alumni who studied at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität under the auspices of the Junior Year in Freiburg and the Academic Year in Freiburg. You can help us by spreading the word and liberally forwarding the newsletter to other JYF and AYF Alumni. We’d love to hear from you! And please stop by and visit when your travels bring you back to Freiburg – perhaps as soon as this coming July!

With cordial best wishes,

Kerstin Barndt, Academic Director 2018-19
Peter McIsaac, Academic Director 2019-20
Ulrich (Ulli) Struve, Program Director

Additional Contact information

Alumni Club website – this is the joint landing page for both chapters, for the AYF Alumni Association (US chapter) and for AYF Alumni & Friends (German chapter)

Interest Survey to RSVP for AYF Anniversary & Reunion 2020

Online form for newsletter signup and updating your contact information

AYF Alumni Facebook Group

JYF Alumni Facebook Group