When Lander University student Courtney Priester, of Saluda, begins her senior year in September, she will be taking her fall semester classes in South Korea.
Priester, a political science major, is the second Lander student accepted for a South Korean government scholarship to study at the University of Incheon, in Korea's third most populous city. She is responsible for paying her normal Lander tuition but the scholarship will pay for her airfare to and from Incheon, a stipend and insurance for the semester. Priester is scheduled to travel to Incheon in August and it will be her first trip overseas.
In her scholarship application letter, Priester said she has always wanted to go abroad to learn about other cultures at their source, and she described the trip as a once in a lifetime opportunity. She added, "I understand how critical a player the Asian continent, particularly South Korea, will be in the future of world politics. This opportunity would allow me to study how South Koreans perceive the world and how they wish to shape world perceptions."
Priester plans to go to law school after completing her undergraduate studies at Lander. "I've wanted to be a lawyer since I was eight or nine years old." She wants to work in criminal law as a prosecutor.
Because of her academic achievements, including a 3.90 grade point average, Priester has been on both the President's and Dean's lists at Lander. She is also an English and political science tutor in the university's Writing and Academic Success Centers.
She is a member of the Political Science Association and People to People International.
When she arrives at the University of Incheon, Priester will be following in the footsteps of Lander mass communication major Nicole Richmond, of Columbia, who spent the fall 2011 semester at the Korean school, which is one of Lander's 10 sister schools in South Korea, China and Thailand.