Two ASU alums selected for U.S. Department of State fellowship

The Lorraine W. Frank Office of National Scholarships Advisement has announced that two recent Arizona State University graduates have been selected for the 2024-25 Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange (CBYX) for Young Professionals program, a U.S. Department of State fellowship that places young Americans in Germany for cultural exchange and professional development.

In July, Pacey Smith-Garcia and Huong Emma Dang began an 11-month stint as program fellows in Germany.

Now in its 41^st year as a joint program of the German Bundestag and U.S. Congress, CBYX for Young Professionals provides 75 American and 75 German young leaders the opportunity to spend up to a year in each other’s countries studying, interning, and living with host families.

“The CBYX program is a remarkable opportunity to gain both professional experience and benefit from deep engagement with a foreign culture,” said Kyle Mox, associate dean for national scholarships. “Our students who have previously received this award have raved about their experiences.”

Several ASU students have received this award in recent years, including Jordan Harb in 2023-2024 and Michelle Ailport and Katherine Ciaramello in 2022-2023.

The fellowship is open to candidates in all career fields between the ages of 18 ½ and 24 who are interested in a year of academic, professional, and cultural exchange.

Cultural Vistas administers the CBYX for Young Professionals program through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. 

“I am incredibly grateful to have been selected for the CBYX program,” said Smith-Garcia, who received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Along with his studies he worked for ICT News telling the stories of global Indigenous communities. He helped create a news segment to teach Native American languages, including his own Ute Mountain language, and produced two award winning documentaries. In the future he hopes to continue making great documentary films.

Smith-Garcia started his studies as a CBYX fellow with two months of language school in Saarbruken, near the French border. He will spend the remainder of the program at the University of Cologne, where he will focus on journalism course work. He also will pursue an internship in public media with a focus on long form storytelling or in television.

Smith-Garcia said he hopes to learn how Germany’s large public media sector functions on many levels, from how average Germans view the system to how different stations operate.

“I have been in Germany for about a month now and I am still as excited as I was on the first day to experience living in a new country,” he said recently.

Dang, whose bachelor’s degree is in informatics, aims to combine her passion for user experience design with software engineering. Since graduating with honors from Barrett, The Honors College at ASU, she has been working in information technology, focusing on projects with enterprise resource planning systems.

During college, Dang received the U.S. Department of State’s Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship, which allowed her to intern abroad in Singapore, an experience that deepened her passion for fostering global connections, embracing new cultures, and gaining a deeper understanding of the world.

Dang said she looks forward to exploring the intersection of technology, design, and social good, while also learning German as a participant in the CBYX program.

The application deadline for the 2025–2026 Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange (CBYX) program is November 1. Current ASU students and recent graduates who are interested in applying for the program should contact ONSA at onsa@asu.edu.