Pair of alums headed to Austria for teaching fellowship

The Office of Fellowships is happy to announce that Anusha Kumar (SESP ’26) and Tristan Weng (WCAS ’26) were chosen for the 2026–2027 cohort of the United States Teaching Assistants at Austrian Secondary Schools! Through the program, Anusha and Tristan will spend the next year as language assistants in an Austrian classroom.

Anusha graduated from Northwestern University with majors in social policy and environmental policy and culture and a minor in German. At Northwestern, Anusha was a member of Fossil Free Northwestern and Students Organizing for Labor Rights. Beyond advocacy and organizing on campus, Anusha was an undergraduate fellow at the Center for Civic Engagement for three years, a tutor with Books & Breakfast for four years, the student representative on Northwestern’s ANCHOR Grants (Advancing Neighborhood and Community Health, Opportunity and Resilience) committee, and a member of the City of Evanston’s Environment Board. As a volunteer at Evanston Grows, Anusha authored a successful proposal for an urban farm to address food insecurity in Evanston through Evanston's Participatory Budgeting cycle. She also won the Newman Civic Fellowship in 2025 in recognition of her environmental advocacy. Through her experiences, Anusha is committed to the transformation that results from diverse relationships rooted in solidarity and care.

For her senior honors thesis, “From Scarcity to Solidarity: Mutual Aid as a Pathway to Food Justice and Urban Resilience in Chennai, India," Anusha conducted fifteen interviews with members of three Chennai-based grassroots organizations to examine how community-led mutual aid networks help people access food and build resilience across the city, specifically in relation to caste and gender. Her thesis won the top overall poster award and first place in the social justice division at the Chicago Area Undergraduate Research Symposium.

Anusha is drawn to work as a language assistant to build on her skills as a Books & Breakfast tutor of four years. In Austria, she hopes to engage in cross-cultural exchange and intergenerational learning that will inform her future as a facilitator, organizer, and changemaker.

Tristan is a recent Northwestern graduate from New York City who majored in chemistry and minored in German and Russian and East European studies. He is currently applying to medical school and will spend his gap year in Vienna through the USTA program.

At Northwestern, Tristan conducted research in the Odom Lab on nanostructured materials with biological applications. He also developed his interest in teaching during his work with Jumpstart, through the Center for Civic Engagement, and later with the Community Connect Schools Early Childhood Team, where he worked in Evanston and Chicago preschools to support children’s early language, literacy, and social-emotional development.

Through USTA, Tristan is excited to build on the German he began studying at Northwestern by using the language in everyday life in Vienna. He hopes to help students feel more confident using English in practical, everyday ways while learning from their perspectives on school and life in Austria. As he prepares for medical school, he sees the year as a chance to keep developing the way he communicates with people from different backgrounds.

A partnership of Fulbright Austria and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, US Teaching Assistantships at Austrian Secondary Schools provide college graduates from the United States with the opportunity to work as secondary school teaching assistants in communities throughout Austria. In addition to serving as valuable linguistic models in classroom English instruction, US teaching assistants are also valuable resources for firsthand information about American culture and serve as informal representatives of the United States.

Anusha and Tristan join several past Northwestern alums to win this award, including recent recipients Isabelle Day (WCAS ’25), who won the award last year, and Sofia Stutz (WCAS ’23), who won it two years ago.

Contact Amy Kehoe at amy.kehoe@northwestern.edu to learn more about the US Teaching Assistantships at Austrian Secondary Schools.