Notre Dame Scholar Studies in South Korea

This past summer, Notre Dame Posse Scholar Sydney Porter realized a childhood dream of travelling to Seoul, South Korea. Sydney earned a grant through Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Languages and Cultures that enabled her to enroll in and travel to Yonsei University’s Korean Language Institute.

“I hope I can return after I graduate.”

Studying Korean as part of the Institute’s Summer Special Program afforded Sydney 100 contact hours with an instructor over 25 weekday sessions. The Summer Special Program supplements intensive classroom instruction with two days of cultural immersion activities every week, exposing students to Korean Cooking, Taekwondo, pottery and K-POP dance.

Sydney says she looked forward to the K-POP dance activities the most, building on an interest in the culture she developed after discovering Korean television shows as a child.

She hopes the experience in Seoul and her political science major at Notre Dame will help her build a future career abroad.

“I’ve wanted to go to Korea for a long time,” Sydney says. “I hope I can return after I graduate.”