When his father died in 1996, Fallou Ngom returned to Senegal from where he was teaching French and linguistics at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash. Ngom participated in the funeral services, spent time with his family, and collected some of his father’s belongings to bring on the daylong flight back with him.

A box of his father’s old papers—various to-do lists, dashed-off ideas, deeds, receipts, and other ephemera that collect throughout a life—lay dormant in a corner of Ngom’s office for nearly a decade before he opened it. He couldn’t have known it at the time, but waiting for Ngom inside this box was a scrap of paper that would alter the course of his life and the lives of countless others.

In 2004, when he dusted off the box and sat down to sift through these tokens of his father’s life, Ngom found something confounding: a note, scribbled in his father’s hand, about a debt he owed a local trader. The note was doubly surprising. First, Ngom had thought his father was illiterate—he didn’t read French, the official language of Senegal. But the note wasn’t in French, it was in a script that looked like Arabic, but sounded like Wolof, a regional West Atlantic language.

Ngom, who studied Arabic as a second language (the 2nd of 12 languages that the scholar knows), was stunned. He asked his brother, still living in Senegal, to check with the neighbor to whom their father owed money. Sure enough, his brother reported, the trader had a record of the debt, too, in a similar Arabic-turned-Fula script.

“That’s when I realized: we’ve been told that these people are illiterate, and they’re absolutely not,” says Ngom, a Boston University College of Arts & Sciences professor of anthropology.

Ngom needed to know more. He applied for a postdoctoral fellowship in 2004 to travel to West Africa and dig into this surprising writing system. Tellingly, it was BU’s West African Research Association that granted Ngom’s postdoc—albeit years before he would join the University’s faculty.

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Pamela Urchel’s excitement for her budding career in public relations is unmistakable. As a transfer student to BU’s College of Communication, Urchel knew she would be afforded many exciting opportunities to deepen her knowledge of the field and gain critical real-world experience.

What she did not realize until speaking to her advisor is that, even as a transfer student who only had two years at BU—during the pandemic no less—she could study abroad, gain valuable internship experience at an international public relations firm, and graduate on time. On top of that, she was offered a full-time position from her London internship company to work for their New York City office (remotely from her home state of Illinois) upon graduation.

“I heard so many wonderful things about Boston University Study Abroad, especially the London programs for Comm [majors],” Urchel said. “I am so grateful and happy that I could do the London Internship Program especially because of the internship aspect. Being a transfer student, I didn’t have as many internships in PR.”

Urchel had experience working in BU’s award-winning PRLab, a student-staffed PR agency that creates campaigns for paying companies and brands across the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. But she also wanted to gain experience in a different, larger agency structure to get a sense of the similarities and differences across the “agency world.”

“In London I was matched with Grayling, a global PR agency, and my time there was amazing,” Urchel said. “I worked on the corporate team and spent a lot of time conducting research tasks.”

Urchel helped the new business team and felt like her work was appreciated and that it made an impact as senior team leaders researched and pitched new business for the agency. She also updated media lists that her colleagues used to contact and pitch journalists news.

“Sometimes I would work alongside an account executive who assigned me a project, so it really gave me insight into the responsibilities of a junior level role at a PR agency,” Urchel said. “I was also given the opportunity to draft a press release and ask questions throughout the editing process.”

Urchel made great connections with her colleagues in London and looks forward to the potential opportunity to work with them again on future client projects, albeit from the U.S.

“I feel like I’ve made lasting and strong connections in our Grayling London team, which is why I am eager to continue working with the New York team,” she says. “I’m honored and excited to be a part of the Grayling family.”

On the opportunity to study abroad, Urchel says, “I can’t recommend it enough, especially because you learn a lot, and if you do an internship your experience is so unique and will stand out on your resume or CV. Also, you’ll never know what connections you’ll be able to make.”

Always keen to learn more, it may come as no surprise that, now as a PR Account Coordinator at Grayling NYC, Urchel is becoming well-versed in the differing media and competitive landscapes of her clients. Urchel represents clients in various industries, including fintech, e-commerce, and crypto.

Originally published on BU Global Programs

Originally published on BU Today

By the time Tess Walsh arrived at Boston University, she was champing at the bit to travel to parts of the world she’d only read about. Growing up in Cambridge, Mass., she had done very little traveling prior to college. “That’s why my first question for my academic advisor was, ‘How can I study abroad?’” Walsh says.

Inspired by the beauty of the Italian language, Walsh (Wheelock’24) took an introductory course at BU and discovered she loved it. Soon after, she decided to apply to study abroad in Padua, Italy, where she has been living and studying this semester.

An early education major, Walsh takes one course, Intercultural Education, at the University of Padua, and three classes through BU—one on art history, with a focus on Padua and Venice, another on Italian language, and a third about the food industry in Italy—a great match for someone who describes herself as “obsessed with food.”

Outside the classroom, Walsh has immersed herself in Italian culture by living with a host family and traveling almost every weekend to new destinations, among them Venice, Verona, Milan, Sicily, Genoa, Napoli, Capri, Florence, and Rome. She even hopped a plane for a quick visit to Dublin, Ireland. She says she feels lucky that her study abroad coincided with a return to (mostly) normal in Europe since the pandemic started. “If I had gone a year or two ago, a lot of experiences I’ve been able to have might not have been possible, due to COVID,” she says.

For Walsh, creating this vlog was not only a way to document her semester in Italy; it was also a way to encourage others to study abroad, and like her, have a transformative experience. “Living abroad has affected my perspectives on life and the world in so many ways,” she says. “I feel more knowledgeable, patient, communicative, experienced, and mature.

“My eyes have been more opened, and I feel my ability to look at things in different ways has grown.”

The theme of Joy presented some of our most interesting interpretations. One thing is clear, children by far brought the most Joy, with 61 of the nearly 500 pictures submitted being of children! Animals, also not surprisingly, were solidly represented with 48 images of fish, fowl, mammals, reptiles and insects being submitted. Images of dogs made up a full third of all animal pictures. There were also 23 images of food, including eating and or cooking with friends or family, 17 images of flowers, and 8 wedding and engagement images.

A fun fact: Eight of the 10 judges had a different first-place choice, and only one of the 16 finalists received two first-place votes. Additionally, the People’s Choice top eight images were also among the Judged top eight images. Guest judges included Cydney Scott, Photojournalist for BU Today, and Ty Furman Managing Director of the BU Arts Initiative.

This was the first year the Program had a People’s Choice voting category and it was a resounding success! Over 1,100 voted over the course of the week.

Winner: Judged Category

Iceland
“Social distancing from civilization in the fjords of Iceland. On our third day of backpacking, after seeing almost no one, we awoke to find the clouds had cleared, allowing the sun to shine its full 23 hours a day. Plenty of daylight to find joy together in one of the last untouched places in Europe.”

Name: Jacob Chang-Rascle
Affiliation: Undergraduate COM Student
@jacobchangphoto

Winner: People’s Choice

Lhasa Tibet
“A Tibetan child is having fun with his little sister in the heavy rain.”

Name: Ziyu (Julian) Zhu
Affiliation: Undergraduate CGS Student
@zzyjulian

The Global Programs received 632 photos through 238 submissions from 108 undergraduate and 131 graduate students, 19 faculty, 23 staff, one alumni and one exchange student. All 17 schools and colleges were represented as well as BU Academy!

The theme was “…from Anywhere” and submissions certainly did not disappoint. In this extraordinary year, the BU community was anywhere and everywhere. They took us on visits to National Parks, hikes through the woods, and surprisingly, even sunset handstands and yoga on beaches all over the world (it is a thing, apparently!). We saw dozens of pictures of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and fowl. Many rediscovered old passions while others discovered new ones. The most common photograph titles were “Resilience from Anywhere” and “Joy from Anywhere” and they left us feeling hopeful and in awe.

First Place

New Year from Anywhere
Name: Xiaoyu Yang
Photo Location: Wuhan, China
Affiliation: Undergraduate CAS Student

Second Place

Family from Anywhere
Name: Michael O’Mara
Photo Location: Winthrop, Massachusetts
Affiliation: CAS Faculty

Third Place

Resilience from Anywhere
Name: Danielle Volpe
Photo Location: Waitsfield, Vermont
Affiliation: Healthway Staff