CBC Student Spotlight: Ronald Palmenberg
Ronald shares highlights from his summer in Germany as part of the CBC Undergraduate 2025 Summer Study in Leipzig!
"During the past summer, I attended the Summer Study in Leipzig program. I had fun experiencing German learning through casual, everyday experiences while also practicing in a classroom setting. I forged strong friendships through the tandem partner program; strong enough to convince me to extend my stay beyond the end of the class. The most fun I had was traveling to and exploring new cities to see all of what Germany has to offer. My main motivation to study in Leipzig was to see how school in Germany compares to the U.S. to see if I would be interested in pursuing my Ph. D for Biochemistry in Germany.
Potsdam is one of my favorite cities that I travelled to. The massive Prussia palaces in the city are beyond any architecture I could see in the U.S.
The best museum experience was taking a guided tour around a former Stasi prison in East Berlin. The tour guide had actually been incarcerated there for protesting, a fact I found particularly powerful while looking around the former prison.
As a biochemist, I was excited to show my new friends some of my passions at a science night hosted by the University of Leipzig.
Leipzig is so full of parks that we could walk right outside our classroom to work on school assignments while also enjoying nature!"