Making Life Better
Exchange Student
Chompunut Chayawat is grateful for the modern equipment, plentiful research plots and fast-food hamburgers she has easy access to thanks to the college's exchange program with Chiang Mai University.
Student Profile
Name: Chompunut Chayawat
Home country: Thailand
Year: Ph.D. student
Major: Micrometerology
Chompunut Chayawat, an exchange student from Chiang Mai University in Thailand, travelled more than 10,000 miles for the opportunity to earn her doctorate degree from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
After earning bachelors and master's degrees in agronomy from her home university, Chayawat was searching for a university from which to earn her doctorate degree.
"My university does not offer a degree in micrometerology, so my professor told me about the UGA exchange program," she said. "I'd never been to the United States before, and I thought it would be a challenge to study at a big university and work alongside Dr. Monique Leclerc."
Chayawat has been in the United States working on the Griffin campus with Leclerc for almost two years. She says she is grateful for the educational experience that's been offered to her through the college.
"I have a good relationship with all of my UGA colleagues," she said. "They help me guide my project, and all the people in Griffin are very kind and friendly. In my research I'm able to use a lot of instruments I wouldn't have access to in Thailand, and here there is a big area for research. We travel to other campuses and use fields there, too."
Although she works on climate change in the laboratory, Chayawat hasn't had to adjust to big climate changes in Georgia. She finds the weather here very similar to the climate in Thailand. "We have a lot of fall season and we don't get snow," she said. "It was wonderful to see the snow we had this winter in Georgia as I had never seen snow before."
Aside from missing her family, especially her younger brother, Chayawat isn't homesick for Thailand.
"I can make Thai food by going to the market in Atlanta," she said. "It just takes a long time to cook it so I usually grab a hamburger. You can eat very quickly here in America. There's fast food everywhere."