Miyu Owada ’26 explored how food moves from farm to table in a Tokyo suburb.
Adelina Grotenhuis ’28 studied Dutch language and culture in her father’s homeland.
Nhi Nguyen ’26 interviewed parents in her native Vietnam to understand how they perceive their children’s intelligence.
These studies were funded last summer by Oldenborg international grants, which support intensive language study or research and travel toward a senior thesis or project. The students shared their findings during an Oldenborg lunch presentation in November.
"These grants epitomize transformative global learning, enabling students to apply their language proficiency, intercultural knowledge and research skills through authentic community engagement,” says Kara Godwin, Pomona’s assistant vice president and chief global officer. “Students gain critical experience merging theory and practice in real-world contexts."
Owada, an anthropology and Asian studies double major, spent the 2024-25 academic year enrolled in a Tokyo university program to increase her Japanese language skills and understanding of Japanese culture. The program included a community engagement component; she chose to work in a patisserie in Mitaka, a Tokyo suburb known for its parks and open space.
She soon noticed “a lot of the cakes had descriptions of fruits or vegetables that are produced by local farmers,” she says. They will be labeled, for example, “Mr. So and So’s strawberry shortcake.”
Her interest piqued, Owada visited a local greenery center. She connected with the farmers who bring produce to market daily, and she later volunteered at an organic farm.
An Oldenborg International Research and Travel Grant made it possible for Owada to extend her stay in Japan through the summer to do foundational research for her senior thesis. Through participant observation and structured interviews, she explored “This intricate system of producer, retailer, consumer, from farm to dinner table” in Mitaka.
“I wanted to go in depth researching it,” Owada says. The grant “provided me a really valuable experience as an undergrad to navigate the research field on my own.”
Grotenhuis, a science, technology and society major, holds dual U.S.-Dutch citizenship—her father is Dutch, her mother American. Raised in the U.S., she’s visited her father’s family in the Netherlands but never learned to speak the language.
That changed last summer, when an Oldenborg Summer Intensive Language Study Grant made it possible for her to enroll at the University of Amsterdam.
Grotenhuis lived a typical Dutch life with relatives while in the program, taking the train an hour each way to Amsterdam’s Central Station and catching a tram to the university.
She found her fellow students from countries such as Egypt, Greece, Germany and Czechia inspiring. “They didn’t want to just get away with the bare minimum. They wanted to take that extra step to engage in the culture,” she says.
During the summer, “I was able to pick up Dutch, and I gained more confidence in myself and my ability to learn a new culture,” says Grotenhuis. “This experience has inspired me to the possibility of maybe pursuing higher education or working in the Netherlands.”
For Nguyen, a sociology major, life experience sparked the idea for her summer research project. “I spent a lot of my life in both public and international schools in Vietnam before attending high school in the U.S.,” she says.
“When I was growing up in Vietnam, parents mostly focused on children’s grades and academic performance,” Nguyen adds. “But with the rise of western-style education like international schools, many parents now also value other things . . . talent and art, being good at sports, leadership skills. So, I became interested in studying how parents respond to these changes in education, how they view intelligence in their children differently because of changes in education.”
Nguyen recruited eight mothers in Hanoi. Four were middle class and sent their children to public or private schools following the Vietnamese national curriculum. Four were upper middle class with children enrolled in international schools or colleges abroad. In-person interviews with these mothers ran 90 minutes to three hours.
Nguyen first established a baseline understanding of children’s intelligence. She discovered that all eight parents agreed that intelligence is being able to learn quickly, having a good memory and being perceptive.
But the upper-middle-class parents “also care about things that are not necessarily academic, like social skills, emotional intelligence, social intelligence, or being good at sports or debates, and creativity,” Nguyen says. “My main finding was that the type of school really shapes how parents define their children’s intelligence.”
Nguyen says that the research project taught her how to interview and how to analyze people’s words. “I generally want a writing career,” she says. “So, the skill of interpreting language and how to communicate is crucial for writing, regardless of what kind of writing I choose to pursue.”