India Bryant, 22, looked around for her next step after Rome's Berry College awarded her a bachelor's degree in German and political science last month.

The Kennesaw Mountain High graduate wants to groom herself to make a difference in global peacemaking, she said.

Her dream: a role in the United Nations. "I have a real passion for uniting the world."

In late May, a letter arrived from the prestigious Fulbright Austrian-American Educational Commission saying she'd been selected for a Fulbright teaching assistantship.

Bryant is headed this fall to a small Austrian town in the southern Alps near the Slovenian and Italian borders.

In Klagenfurt, she'll teach English to German-speaking high school students at a boarding school while studying for her master's degree at the University of Klagenfurt.

"I want to be as fluent and confident in it as possible," Bryant said.

She's also signing up to take Slavic and Italian languages along with economics, her major area of study.

"It will be interesting to study economics from the European perspective," said the Marietta resident.

To prepare for the new role, Bryant's mother, Karen, has been giving her daughter pointers on teaching English as a second language. Her mother is a language arts coordinator at Pine Mountain Middle School.

As an English teaching assistant in Austria, Bryant describes her assignment as "the go-to person on all things American."

This won't be Bryant's first taste of higher education in Europe.

Her junior year at Berry, she spent five months studying at the University of Regensburg in southern Germany for credit.

"I got to meet people from all over the world, from Australia, China, Mexico. My roommates were Polish, Turkish and German," she said.

From that experience, she said, "I've got friends all over the world."

Bryant plans to get an early start on her Austrian experience. She will visit her former Polish roommate in England before the school year begins in late September.

While in Austria, Byrant will have plenty of scenery and subjects for her hobby of photography. She hopes to scuba dive in the Adriatic and travel to see much of eastern and western Europe. The Fulbright scholarship will cover her room and board and a monthly stipend.