Rick Cieri during his Fulbright orientation in the courtyard of the Instituto Internacional Americano in Madrid
The best part of living and studying abroad for Frederick “Rick” Cieri ’17 is learning something new every day.
That includes the joy of honing his skills in foreign languages—four, so far.
“You can never stop learning more about a foreign culture, just as you can never stop learning while studying a language,” Cieri says. “For me, this makes every day an exciting opportunity to learn something new, to better understand a foreign culture and to enhance my vocabulary—in whichever language I am engaging with that day.”
A semester and a summer abroad with SU Abroad and two highly competitive national awards—a Fulbright and a Boren Scholarship—have kept him exploring and learning abroad for the better part of the last three years.
Cieri, who graduated with degrees in international relations and modern foreign languages from the College of Arts and Sciences and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, studied abroad during a semester in Strasbourg, France, and during a summer program in Madrid. He was named a Boren Scholar, which sent him to São Paulo his senior year, where he took classes in English and then in Portuguese as he learned the language.
Currently in Madrid after being selected for the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Program, Cieri assists in English and social science classes in a secondary school and also teaches a Model UN curriculum to 13- and 14-year-old students.
