Love of culture leads to international teaching

Calvin Older, a Central Michigan University graduate (’25) from Clare, Michigan, has a deep interest in learning about other cultures, as well as sharing his own. As an undergraduate, he completed an internship and language study abroad which strengthened his commitment to building an informed worldview. Older was teaching at a bilingual private school in Shenzhen, China early this summer when he received an email from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program awarding him a prestigious Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Grant (ETA) to Georgia, located in the Caucasus region.

Older, an Honors student, who majored in international relations and minored in geographic information sciences, will spend 9 months in Georgia teaching English and sharing U.S. culture in his host community. He feels that he can share aspects of U.S. culture to which his students abroad have not been previously exposed.

“During my experience teaching English online to Georgian students at EduHub, I observed that many students' perceptions of America were largely shaped by movies and social media, often leading them to view the country as defined solely by New York or Los Angeles,” he said. “Growing up in rural Michigan, I enjoyed sharing a different perspective on American life, one that is often overlooked.”

This will not be Older’s first time traveling to Georgia.

“I applied for the Fulbright in Georgia due to my enriching experiences studying Russian there under the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) and the Russian Language and Area Studies Program (RLASP),” he said. “I formed meaningful friendships with my host family, language partners, and members of the local community, immersing myself in Georgian culture.”

Additional experience in Georgia is also strongly related to Older’s career goal of entering the U.S. Foreign Service.

“When I left Georgia the first time after completing the CLS program, I knew that my time there was not finished,” he said. “Georgia has been walking the balance of aligning itself with the Western world while still managing its Soviet past and ties to Russia. To watch this situation, unfold and learn from the people living through it would be an invaluable experience.”

Fulbright U.S. Student Grants provide funding for graduate school enrollment, independent research, or teaching English over 140 countries worldwide. Fulbright recipients are selected based on their academic and professional record, host country-specific preferences, and cultural competency. Older received support throughout the application process from the CMU National Scholarship Program. 

As Older prepares to take on this new role in Georgia, he has reflected on his own language learning journey and how it has impacted his pursuit of the Fulbright ETA.

“Language learning has always been something that has captured my interest, but I found very few opportunities in my small hometown to exercise my language abilities and connect with native speakers,” he said. “I found online language partners across the world, and we taught each other our native languages. I gained a lot of insight into how others learned English on their own and I shared my own methods of language learning. This exchange of strategies is what has drawn me to teaching.”