Ten Yale-China Teaching Fellows to begin appointments this summer
Ten graduating seniors and two members of the Yale College Class of 2006 will teach for two years in China as a part of the Yale-China Association's Teaching Fellowship Program.
Four members of the group will be starting new teaching programs for the association, which for over a century has worked to promote mutual understanding between Chinese and Americans through teaching and service.
The new Yale-China Fellows, who will begin their appointments this summer, will teach academic writing and oral English courses, and lecture on American history and culture to Chinese university and high school students and teachers. Throughout their two-year assignments, they will also study Chinese language and culture and carry out community engagement projects.
Fellows are chosen from a large and competitive pool of applicants for their cross-cultural agility, teaching ability, academic achievement and commitment to community service.
The members of the Class of 2007 who have been named as fellows are Usha Chilukuri of Morse College, Celia Choy of Branford College, Romina Da Costa of Silliman College, Jonathan Fork of Davenport College, Peter Hamilton of Berkeley College, Veronica Hu of Davenport College, Ying-Ying Ma of Berkeley College, Ashley Nyquist of Saybrook College, Heyman Oo of Timothy Dwight College, and Evan Yu of Pierson College. The new fellows from the Class of 2006 are Naoko Kozuki of Pierson College and Esther Young of Saybrook College.
"As impressed as I am with their academic and professional abilities, what I find most remarkable about this year's incoming fellows is their demonstrated belief in education as a means of improving individual lives and communities," says Travis Sevy, Yale-China program officer for teaching programs and exchanges. "Spending two years teaching and living in a Chinese community is a continuation of the work these students started at Yale."
Da Costa and Yu will be teaching English language and literature as the first Yale-China Teaching Fellows at the association's newest teaching site at Hunan University in Changsha, Hunan province. Da Costa, an anthropology major from Sao Paulo, Brazil, served as a Yale President's Public Service Fellow and as a Dwight Hall Public School Intern during her time at Yale. Yu, a literature major from Phoenix, Arizona, taught literature and music to juvenile inmates in southern Taiwan on an International Prison Fellowship during one of her summers at Yale, and taught English and music to disadvantaged children in Peru as an intern at Club Alianza Lima Pro Nino Intimo over another summer.
Fork and Hamilton will teach academic writing courses for English majors and lecture on American history and culture at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Fork, an English language and literature major from Johannesburg, South Africa, worked as a student recruitment coordinator and a senior interviewer for the Yale Undergraduate Admissions Office, and served on the English Students Advisory Committee. Hamilton, a history major from Leawood, Kansas, served on the Yale Student Activities Committee (YSAC) and worked as a Berkeley College master's aide. Hamilton also spent a summer interning for a state-owned enterprise in Beijing and for a fashion magazine in Shanghai.
Kozuki and Oo will teach English to students and faculty at the Yali Middle School in Changsha, Hunan province, which was founded by the Yale-China Association in 1906. Kozuki, an East Asian studies major from Tokyo, Japan, studied in Beijing on a Richard U. Light Fellowship and served as a Yale-China Service Intern at the Daytop drug rehabilitation center in Kunming, China. Since graduating in 2006, Kozuki has been researching U.S.-Japan trade issues at an international law firm in Washington, D.C. Oo, a psychology and behavioral neuroscience major from Fremont, California, chaired the Timothy Dwight Residential College Seminar Committee and volunteered at the Mae Sot Clinic for Burmese refugees in Thailand on Stacey Sanders and Bergin Fellowships. Oo plans to attend medical school in California after her Yale-China Fellowship.
Chilukuri and Choy will teach academic English and American studies at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, Guangdong province. Chilukuri, a history major from San Diego, California, devoted much of her time at Yale to public education, volunteering in local elementary schools and as a Girl Scouts troop leader. She also served as editor-in-chief of Our Education, an education policy publication. Choy, a philosophy major from San Francisco, California, served as an executive editor of the Yale Philosophy Review and received a Humanity in Action fellowship to study human rights issues in Europe. Chilukuri and Choy were both elected to Phi Beta Kappa during their senior years.
Hu and Nyquist will teach English at Xiuning Middle School, a rural high school in Anhui province. Hu, an ethics, politics and economics major from Hacienda Heights, California, served as a Dwight Hall Urban Fellow, facilitating court-referred mediation and returning-offender circle dialogues with the local community. He also spent a summer as a Yale-China Service Intern training rural English teachers in Guizhou, China. Nyquist, a political science major from Owatonna, Minnesota, served as a freshman counselor for Saybrook College and participated in the Yale-China Association's Yale University-New Asia College Exchange Program. She will attend Harvard Law School after her fellowship.
As Yale-China's first Medical English Teaching Fellows, Ma and Young will be teaching for a year at Central South University's Xiangya School of Medicine, an institution that Yale-China established in 1914. Ma, an anthropology major from New Rochelle, New York, taught English to AIDS support groups and public health officials as a summer intern at the Aizhixing Institute of Health Education in Beijing, China. During her time at Yale she served as editor-in-chief of the Yale Journal of Human Rights and was awarded a Yale Richter Fellowship to study reconciliation and development in South Africa. Young, a psychology major from Caracas, Venezuela, chaired the Yale International Relations Association and worked as a research assistant at the Yale Center for Child Development. Since graduating in 2006, Young has spent the last year teaching English and studying Mandarin in Taiwan.
The Yale-China Teaching Fellowship is open to Yale graduating seniors and to any Yale graduate for up to five years after graduation. Graduate students are also eligible to apply. For more information about the fellowship, contact Travis Sevy, Yale-China program officer for teaching programs and exchanges, at travis.sevy@yale.edu or (203) 432-2295.
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