UNO students are certainly nationally competitive, as recent awardee for the Schwarzman scholarship, Ottllie, reveals.
When Ottilie Cooper-Ohm accepted a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship, she didn’t know she was opening a door to further global interests and more international recognition for UNO and its 2022 graduate in Information Technology (B.S.) with minors in Art History and Russian.
Ottilie will head this fall to Beijing for a fully-funded Master’s degree program in Global Affairs at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. As a member of this global cohort representing 105 universities and 38 countries, Ottilie will move Nebraska into new areas again. She describes the interview process for the Schwarzman in NYC as a “truly international experience”, and she is excited to realize the possibilities of her international cohort in China.
Following her graduation, Ottilie was awarded a competitive Fulbright English Teaching Assistant position in Uzbekistan as a chance to share both her technical and language skills with students fortunate enough to find her in their classrooms. The opportunity grew into an extended two-year stay in the country that culminated in organizing an international lacrosse women’s championship, an undertaking that showcased her technical and language abilities but also expanded far more deeply and widely in her ongoing commitments to understanding how international funding functions (and not), especially with her growing understanding of sources and international negotiations.
It was Ottilie’s growing interests in the ways different countries in central Asia invest in all sectors to boost trade and income across their region that led to her most recent national recognition. She is the recipient of a prestigious Schwarzman Scholarship, one of 150 selected globally from 5,000 applicants.
Having completed an internship at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC last fall, she is looking forward to more travel this spring to Europe and central Asia before she begins her next adventure overseas. And while she might not yet know where that will take her in 2026, there is no question this Maverick’s journey will keep evolving.