Cathleen Clara is pretty sure she knows what she wants to spend her award money on.

A winner of the Homer Higbee International Education Award, Clara will spend the $400 prize on books to help build her library in the alternative school classroom where she is a teacher.

The Office of International Studies & Program awards the Higbee to one U.S. student and one international student who help further multicultural understanding and awareness of international issues.

Clara, a curriculum and teaching graduate student, received the award for her involvement in Linking All Types of Teachers to International Cross-cultural Education, which is a group of 30 kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers in Lansing who get together with MSU international graduate students.

"We basically get together and talk about our community, schools and culture," Clara said.

Clara also won for getting her students involved with international issues.

"We worked to put together a book of poetry by a South African teenage poet," Clara said.

"The response was really excellent. The poet Sibongeleni Zulu came and visited, and we held a potluck."

Clara says she tries to bring international issues to her students.

"I think very often my students are sheltered and aren't exposed to a lot of things," Clara said.

"There are things I can bring to the classroom to make them culturally aware. Doing these things helps bring the realities of the world around them, and it helps show that someone from Iraq isn't that different from us."