May 2024 graduate Marietta Song is UTC’s first recipient of the Stevens Initiative Alumni Fellowship. Photo by Angela Foster.
Marietta Song will finally get an opportunity to travel abroad.
Song, a May 2024 University of Tennessee at Chattanooga graduate with a bachelor’s degree in studio art, has been awarded the highly competitive Stevens Initiative Alumni Fellowship. She is the first UTC alum to receive this fellowship, which is supported by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
The Stevens Initiative Alumni Fellowship provides alums from virtual exchange programs in the U.S., the Middle East and North Africa with a unique opportunity to enhance global understanding, advance professional skills and explore leadership development.
The yearlong fellowship, which began earlier this month, includes virtual learning sessions, an in-person workshop in Morocco in December and a culminating summit event in Washington, D.C., next August.
“The fellowship will allow me to collaborate on projects with alumni from other universities who have participated in global IREX (International Research and Exchanges Board) programs. The projects will build up our leadership skills and multicultural communication styles and freshen up what we just learned at school—and maybe even go even deeper into it,” said Song, a Chattanooga native and 2019 graduate of Hixson High School.
During her UTC days, Song participated in the IREX Global Solutions virtual exchange program—an initiative that supports workforce development in the U.S., Iraq and Jordan.
Her campus activities also included participation in The Roost—a filmmaking club for UTC students—and working for GEAR UP, a program that prepares students for college.
As part of her artistic journey, multiple pieces of her artwork recently went on display in the offices of the UTC Division of Access and Engagement thanks to the Access and Engagement Art Fellowship—a rotating artist series created to highlight the work of UTC art students.
One thing Song wasn’t able to do as a student, though, was study abroad. Thanks to the Stevens Initiative Alumni Fellowship, she will soon get that opportunity.
“Even though I’ve always been very interested in meeting new people and learning different cultures, I never got that chance to travel,” she said. “But that will change when I go to Morocco.”
When asked what led her to apply for the Stevens Fellowship, Song said she has always been drawn to multicultural relations.
“I think it stemmed from my childhood,” she said. “I always felt like I was a little ostracized since I was a different race from my peers.”
But after spending two years at Chattanooga State Community College and coming to UTC for her junior year of college, “I found myself in a Japanese class Takeo Suzuki was teaching in Lupton Hall. That’s where I actually got to meet students from another region for the first time.”
The students were Japanese undergraduates from J.F. Oberlin University participating in the English as a Second Language Institute at UTC.
“I made friends and I just grew to really love meeting new people from different cultures,” she said.
Song asked Suzuki, the executive director of the UTC Center for Global Education, to write a letter of recommendation on her behalf as part of the fellowship’s application process.
“I have witnessed Marietta’s dedication to cross-cultural understanding and global engagement while she studied at UTC,” Suzuki said. “The Stevens Initiative Alumni Fellowship is a remarkable opportunity for her to develop these skills further and contribute meaningfully to her community.
“I am confident that Marietta will make the most of this transformative experience. Her journey through the fellowship will inspire her peers and testify to the power of virtual exchange in fostering international connections and mutual understanding.”
Song, who currently works as a graphic design intern for CMC Publications in Chattanooga, is eager to see where the fellowship will take her.
“I’ll get to build off the skills that I already have and get professional networking opportunities,” she said, “and I get to communicate more with students from different regions.”
Learn more
Office of National Scholarships
Stevens Initiative Alumni Fellowship
