Prestigious Gilman Scholarship grants Maryville College’s Qwin Fleckenstein ’25 an international opportunity
Feb. 22, 2024
Carpe diem isn’t a phrase Qwinlynn Fleckenstein ’25 uses in casual conversation, but it’s something of a life philosophy for the Maryville College Business Management major.
At 19, she decided to leave her hometown of Galesburg, Michigan, and move to Tennessee (“why not?” she says). After arriving, she earned her insurance license and worked as an agent, which led to her decision to return to college in the fall of 2022. The following spring, she decided to go to Spain as part of MC’s Study Abroad experience, obtaining the prestigious Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship for a semester at the Universidad Pública de Navarra in Pamplona.
“I love learning new things,” she said recently over a Zoom call from her Pamplona residence, six hours ahead of Maryville College’s Eastern time zone. “What actually made me decide on Spain specifically is that in high school, I was part of a counselor-in-training program, and that involved a two-week camp at the Sherman Lake YMCA (in Augusta, Michigan). The organization also had an exchange program, and I met all these people from Spain.
“I felt really bad that I didn’t understand their language, but they could speak mine! A lot of them were from Barcelona, and they just talked about how beautiful it is there, how nice the people are, and how welcoming the culture is. That made me want to go to Europe, and I decided I needed to go to the other side of the world to see how they live their daily lives.”
Making her own way
Fleckenstein — Qwin to her friends — is no stranger to adventure. She began her college journey as a 15-year-old dual enrollment student, pursuing biochemistry in sprawling lecture halls after her mother dropped her off on campus. With a full college class load — in addition to band, color guard, school groups and softball — it was a difficult transition, one made worse by the arrival of COVID-19. After the pandemic hit, she dropped out, dissatisfied with the education she was receiving. At the time, her best friend had moved to East Tennessee to attend South College. The pair had often joked about Fleckenstein joining her … until one day, she did.
“I took about two years and got my insurance license and worked as an agent, and that was great — but it was only commission, and a lot of people didn’t take me seriously because I was so young,” she said. “I decided I wanted to pursue business, so I started researching schools, and I found Maryville College. I come from a small school in Galesburg, and I wanted more of that smaller, more intimate learning experience. Maryville College offered a lot of financial aid, and they really helped me through the process.”
As a nontraditional student, she lives in Knoxville and commutes to campus, working as a server in a local restaurant. After deciding to go to Spain, she knew she needed two things: to save her money, and to strengthen her ability to speak and understand Spanish.
“I barely knew Spanish, and I never took a Spanish course in high school,” she said. “I knew I had to get the basics down so I could speak it when I got here, so I took Spanish 110 (Elementary Spanish I) and Spanish 120 (Elementary Spanish II) online during the summer, and then took an intermediate-level course in the fall semester.”
The financial means to get to the Iberian Peninsula were another matter entirely, she added. She’s not afraid of hard work, but she knew that she’d need to spend the entirety of her summer working roughly 50 hours a week to save the money to make the trip possible. She heard of the Gilman Scholarship during the 2022-23 academic year, but it wasn’t until midway through summer, when she realized that the long hours she was working likely wouldn’t be enough, that she explored other options. That’s where the MC Center for Global Engagement entered the picture.
Earning the Gilman and then some
Based out of the International House on the MC campus, the Center for Global Engagement “is committed to the principle that global experiences and perspectives are essential to any education.” Center administrators work to smooth the transition for incoming international students, and to broaden the horizons of domestic students who seek to travel and study internationally. Olivia Stephens, the center’s Education Abroad advisor, urged Fleckenstein to apply for the Gilman Scholarship before the 2023-24 academic year began.
Administered by the U.S. State Department, the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program “enables students of limited financial means to study or intern abroad, providing them with skills critical to our national security and economic prosperity,” according to the organization’s website. Applicants must be Pell Grant recipients, and while award amounts vary, students who apply for and receive one are eligible to receive supplementary grants that bring the total to $8,000. As a nationwide competitive scholarship, only 25% of applicants are selected to receive one.
“After the semester started, (the Center for Global Engagement) held a workshop that went more in-depth about what the Gilman applications are actually looking for, and (Director) Kirsten Sheppard helped coach me through it,” Fleckenstein said. “After I submitted it, I had to wait 2 ½ months, and when I found out I got it, it let me back off of work a little bit and get everything in order to go to Spain. I was planning to go whether or not I got it, but I’m so grateful, because I have more opportunities to travel and explore while I’m here that I now can afford.”
In addition, Fleckenstein was awarded the Maryville College Ragsdale International Scholarship, which can be used to cover any required costs related to studying abroad. In addition, her own ingenuity, fostered through her independence and that carpe diem mindset, has helped out as well: By opening a Chase Preferred credit card account after researching them, she used it for all of her Study Abroad expenses … and in return, received roughly $800 in travel points.
Between scholarships, savings and her own thriftiness, she’s taking four courses at the Universidad Pública de Navarra: Business Economics History; Human Resource Management; International Marketing; and two Spanish courses, including one at a local language center. From her home base in Pamplona, she’ll be taking extended excursions throughout Spain and into France while she’s there, and one trip in particular will place her in Morocco, where she’ll be part of a group that rides camels into the Sahara Desert to sandboard and camp out overnight.
Seizing the day, Scots style
There’s been some assimilation difficulty, she said, and some aspects of life in Spain have been startling: like the tendency for people to jump the curb and drive on sidewalks. She misses her car, but public transportation — and her feet — have been dependable methods of getting around, she added.
“A 40-minute walk isn’t anything anymore,” she said. “I’ll walk anywhere from 40 minutes to two hours.”
She lives in a shared residence with other international students, where she has her own room, bathroom and shares a kitchen. It’s a two-minute walk from campus, and thanks to the Cross-Cultural Preparation for Study Abroad course she took at MC before traveling to Spain, her integration into the local culture has been made easier, she said.
“We spent time going over the culture here as well as the assumptions of American culture and kind of recognizing our own strengths and pitfalls,” she said. “We learned how they greet people, how they interact, what type of foods to expect, how the grading system works here. I think all of that previous knowledge I learned helped me be a lot less shocked when I got here.”
Her semester ends on May 31, and she’ll arrive back in Maryville on June 4. She’ll volunteer this summer to teach English to Spanish residents, but beyond that, she’s still determining what the future holds. In the meantime, she’s taking advantage of networking while in Spain, and she’s already leaning toward a return — whether that’s for an internship, or to simply take part in Pamplona’s world-famous summer tradition: the Running of the Bulls.
Like everything else in her life to date, it’ll be a carpe diem moment. If anything, the Gilman Scholarship and her time in Span have taught her that by making the most of opportunity and circumstance, those moments often turn out to be the most poignant.
“I had so much trouble getting here. My flights were delayed for a total of about seven hours over three days, and when I got into Barcelona at 1 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, I had to be up at 5 a.m. to get on a train,” she said. “I had maybe four hours of sleep total in about three days, and I barely knew any Spanish, but even though I only had time for a few hours, when I got to my hotel in Barcelona, I knew I needed to get up and walk around and look, because that’s why I’m here, and the Sagrada Familia (the largest unfinished Catholic church in the world, with construction having begun in 1882) was only two blocks away.
“And it wasn’t just about seeing the monument. It was the feeling of accomplishment for making it to Spain, and it was an incentive to keep going. I knew that this was just the beginning of discovering and enjoying new experiences beyond anything I had ever done before.”
