Tallie Hausser, DMSB'19, on a previous trip to Morocco, posing in front of the Volubilis ruins.
Tallie Hausser, DMSB'19, an international business major with a BSIB concentration in Finance and French, was awarded The Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) to continue her study of Arabic in Morocco this summer, after the NUterm program.
Hausser is currently studying abroad in Lyon, France as part of the NUterm program, taking classes in marketing and managerial accounting at the Centre des Etudes Franco-Americain de Management.
“It's fun looking at marketing from an international perspective and seeing how strategies change based on geography and culture,” Hausser said on her experience so far.
In addition to her studies, Hausser has been taking advantage of her NUterm location as well, visiting the United Nations, and Paris, France.
For the past 10 years, The Critical Language Scholarship has sent over 5,000 American undergraduate and graduate students overseas to immerse themselves in both language and culture. The program's main goal is to broaden the base of Americans studying and mastering critical languages. With the scholarship, Hausser will travel to Tangier, Morocco, for eight weeks to continue intensive studies in Arabic.
During her time in Tangier, she will be representing the U.S. State Department in different intercultural dialogues, as well as studying Arabic for five hours a day. She will also study the Moroccan dialect, Darija.
“It was such an honor to receive this scholarship from the State Department, and I'm really excited about the windows of opportunity that it'll open for me as I perfect my Arabic and make more connections in North Africa,” said Hausser.
While attending the Maggie L. Walker Governor's School for International Studies, a public regional magnet high school in Richmond, Virginia, her interest in Middle Eastern politics and national security began to form, and she started Arabic courses her junior year. As her passion for understanding Middle Eastern conflict grew, she applied for and won The National Security Language Initiative Scholarship to study Arabic in Rabat, Morocco, during the summer of 2015.
During her first semester at Northeastern, Hausser discovered the Social Enterprise Institute (SEI), an organization dedicated to helping alleviate poverty in developing nations through business and enterprise-based solutions. She is currently a SEI e-board member, as well as a research assistant and TA for Dr. Sophie Bacq's Global Social Entrepreneurship class. These experiences lead her to focus on microfinance and impact investing in North and Western Africa, in addition to adding a double minor in Global Social Entrepreneurship and Middle Eastern studies.
“I hope to bring some insight to the BSIB program about business in the Middle East and North Africa, because the intersection of political change and entrepreneurship in this region is definitely something worth keeping an eye on,” said Hausser.