Spotlight on: Alec Weltzien

Alec Weltzien graduated with majors in history and German from Middlebury College in 2009. Following a year in Germany as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant, he worked five months for Dagmar Freitag (MdB) as part of the German Bundestag's International Parliamentary Scholarship program. In 2012 Alec followed the rebalance to Asia, spending five months learning Japanese on a dairy farm in northern Hokkaido, Japan and in Tokyo. Alec joined the Masters in International Affairs Program in August 2012 as a Wolcott Foundation Fellow. He is interested in European politics, East Asian politics, memory studies, and German-Japanese comparative history. Along with academics, Alec has completed internships at the American Enterprise Institute, Asahi TV, The Department of State, and the Department of Commerce, with a summer in Himeji, Japan, studying Japanese as part of the State Department's Critical Language Fellowship. At the moment Alec enjoys working with students in the International Dialogue Program. He hopes to graduate in August and find a career in the federal government afterwards.