"...it gave me the confidence to see myself as a future researcher who can bridge different disciplines and cross international boundaries."
The Global Learning Scholarship didn't just fund my study abroad experience, it completely transformed it. Without worrying about the financial burden, I could actually focus on what mattered: diving deep into my research and soaking up everything Cambridge had to offer.
As a Psychology and Statistics student, I've always been fascinated by how people see the world differently and how we can use that understanding to create real change. The GLS gave me the chance to explore this passion on an international scale during my summer research at the University of Cambridge on the Columbia Summer Research Practicum in Global Behavioral Science (GLOBES) program, where I studied how people around the world think about climate change and how those perceptions actually influence both policy decisions and personal choices.
Studying abroad pushed my learning way beyond anything I could have experienced in a regular classroom. I found myself collaborating with researchers not just from Columbia, but from over 20 institutions worldwide. I learned new approaches to cross-cultural survey design and statistical analysis, and I even got to coordinate outreach and participant recruitment back home in Mexico. I was applying everything I'd studied to real-world problems while helping amplify voices that often go unheard in global research.
The experience has only strengthened my determination to pursue a doctorate in psychology. Working alongside an international research community showed me just how many important questions are still out there waiting to be answered, and how crucial it is to approach them with both scientific rigor and creative collaboration. We even produced a manuscript that's heading for publication. More than that, it gave me the confidence to see myself as a future researcher who can bridge different disciplines and cross international boundaries. But this experience was about so much more than academics. Living in Cambridge's incredibly diverse research community pushed me to communicate across cultures and different ways of thinking.
One moment that really stands out was when I got to share our survey project with people from my home country of Mexico. Listening to community members talk about climate change in their own words reminded me exactly why I fell in love with psychology in the first place: I want to understand how people make sense of their world, and how those individual understandings can come together to drive collective action.
Thanks to the GLS, I feel genuinely prepared for graduate study in psychology and neuroscience, and I'm more committed than ever to using research to tackle global challenges. I'm taking with me not just the technical skills I developed, but also some invaluable lessons about staying humble, being adaptable, and the power of collaboration.
I'm incredibly grateful for this opportunity, and I really hope future students will take that leap and discover what the world beyond their own backyard has to teach them.
