Spanish Concentration

Kevin Omans

2020 Dean's Challenge Award Recipient

Kevin Omans firmly believes that your studies can be personal while remaining relevant to daily life. 

Majoring in Spanish, Korean, and Global Affairs has helped him gain a different historical perspective about the United States’ history, explore his Korean American adoptee identity, and understand diaspora communities and historical cross-cultural connections.   

This explains why he finds topics that straddle the East and West, like the Manila Galleon trade which linked colonies in Asia and the Americas to Europe, Romance language creoles in Asia, and diaspora communities, fascinating. 

He is thankful to have been able to study abroad in Argentina and Taiwan during his time at Mason, and he was a recipient of the Taiwanese government Huayu Enrichment Scholarship which allowed him to study Chinese intensively in Tainan, Taiwan at National Cheng Kung University during the summer of 2018 before spending the fall semester at National Taiwan University in Taipei.   

Kevin is especially grateful for the support of the Korean program at Mason which led to him being recognized for his performance in KORE 202 with the Excellence in Intermediate Korean award in Spring 2019 and winning third place in George Washington University’s Institute of Korean Studies 2019 Korean Literature Essay Contest sponsored by GWU and the Literature Translation Institute of Korea.   

During his time left at Mason, Kevin wishes to study abroad in Korea to improve his Korean and complete a minor in Chinese. 

After graduation, he plans on pursuing a master’s degree in Asian Studies and Spanish and eventually obtain a qualification in Second Language Acquisition so that he can teach and develop curriculum that helps adoptees learn their heritage language.