UpDate - Vol. 11, No. 32, Page 1
May 21, 1992
Honors Program junior named Delaware's fifth Truman Scholar

     Congratulations were the order of the day as President David P.
Roselle met with junior Deborah J. Foster, who has been selected a
1992 Truman Scholar by the Harry S Truman Scholarship Foundation.
     The prestigious award carries a stipend of $30,000 to continue
studies for a career in government or in public service. Foster, an
international relations major, is allowed to use $3,000 of the
scholarship for her senior year and the rest for graduate school.
     Foster's education took an international turn in high school in
her junior year at St. Mark's. Selected as a Congress/Bundestag
cultural student, she spent a year in a small town in southern Bavaria
where the "cows out-numbered the people," she said. Living with a
family with three daughters, Foster attended the local high school and
also learned to speak German  fluently.
     Before and after going to Germany, Foster and the other students
in the program visited Washington, D.C., and met with members of
Congress. They were briefed on German-American affairs. In Germany,
they visited Bonn and Berlin and had similar programs. The experience
was pivotal, she recalls, and "changed her life and perspective,"
kindling her ongoing interest in German-American relations.
     Two years later, she returned to Germany as a Girl Scout
counselor in the only residential camp in Europe and Asia. Most of the
campers were children of the American military or diplomatic corps.
     This past semester, Foster went to Vienna under an American
University program. She lived in a international dormitory with
students from Turkey, eastern Europe and other parts of the world, and
worked in the trade section of the Federal Economics Chamber of
Austria.
     "Austria is not a member of the European Community, and I helped
create an international data base, coordinating trade information
about Austria, Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, France and
Germany," Foster said.
     Summers are active times for Foster, as well. As she did last
year,  this summer Foster will work as a research assistant for
Hedrick Smith in the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins
School for Advanced International Studies. Smith is working on a
four-part PBS series on competitiveness between Germany, Japan and the
United States, which is scheduled to be aired in 1993.
     Foster also will be gearing  up to write her senior thesis for
the University Honors Program. She is investigating the aspects and
implications of the unification of Germany. Although she was not there
when the Berlin Wall was torn down, she visited Berlin before and
after and has first hand impressions and experiences about events
surrounding unification.
     A clarinet player in the Marching Band, a peer educator in
Wellspring and a member of DUSC, Foster is an enthusiastic booster of
the University. A Newark resident, she has lived on campus and said
her years at Delaware have been "phenomenal."
     After experiences with other institutions, she said she
appreciates the fact that she has found faculty and administrators
approachable and supportive, and added that the resources available to
her were outstanding.
     Joseph Pika, associate professor of political science and
international relations, has been the advisor and faculty
representative for the Truman scholarships. According to Pika, there
were 1,109 nominations from 540 institutions for the scholarships, and
the GPA for winners was 3.78. The University has had five Truman
scholars since 1984.
     -Sue Moncure