CLA Student Success Spotlight: Natalie Martz – Master of Arts, German

Natalie Martz graduated cum laude from CSULB in 2019 with BAs in History and German. She is the current President of the College of Liberal Arts Student Council and former President of the German Studies Student Association. Her awards and scholarships include the 2018-2019 CLA Distinguished Undergraduate Honor, the 2020 CLA Graduate Student Research Fellowship, and the 2021 CLA Dean’s List of Graduating Master’s Students. She has served as the student main organizer or co-organizer of three academic conferences at CSULB, worked as an editorial and research assistant for numerous articles and books, and interned at the Manuscripts Department of the German Literature Archive in Marbach am Neckar, Germany. In the fall of 2021, she will begin an M.Phil in History at Oxford University.

What’s the best advice you could give to incoming graduate students?

The best advice I could give to any student is to treat university as more than just a place to get a degree. It is an opportunity to become a more well-rounded and educated citizen of the world, and it is a privilege to which not everyone has access. Take the classes that interest you, even if they don’t fit on the “timely graduation schedule” or are outside of your degree requirements––you can accomplish both. Everyone else in your major has also taken those required classes; assert your individuality and feed your intellectual curiosity with something new that genuinely interests you, no matter how unrelated it may seem to your degree.