Five with Stanford affiliations named 2016 Yenching Scholars

Five students with Stanford affiliations, including four seniors and one alumna, have been named 2016 Yenching Scholars and will receive full scholarships for a one-year master’s degree in China Studies at Yenching Academy of Peking University.

They are among the 130 students chosen from around the world for the program, now in its second year.

Yenching Academy, a residential graduate college at Peking University, offers a wide array of interdisciplinary courses on China within broadly defined fields of the humanities and social sciences. The scholars, who will work closely with academic mentors, have the freedom to create their own study paths leading to a master’s degree in China Studies, choosing from six academic concentrations and a variety of extracurricular activities.

Alexandra Gray, a senior majoring in political science, with minors in creative writing and Chinese, will pursue a master’s degree in China Studies with a concentration in law and society at Yenching Academy.

Gray, who has studied Mandarin for about six years and has studied abroad in China on three occasions, said she is well positioned to achieve deeper immersion in Chinese society and to share the benefits of that familiarity with her Western peers through the program.

Last summer, she received a Stanford in Government Summer Fellowship to work as a public service intern at Internews, an international nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower local media worldwide to give people the news and information they need, the ability to connect and the means to make their voices heard. At Internews, Gray helped develop a proposal for a youth project in Sri Lanka.

In fall 2014, Gray studied at Peking University in Beijing through Stanford’s Bing Overseas Studies Program.

At Stanford, Gray was active in the performing arts, including Gaieties 2013, Eurydice and Hairspray. She also served as head prose and poetry editor of The Leland Quarterly. She is a member of Pi Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honor Society.

Benjamin Pham, a senior majoring in political science with minors in East Asian history and German studies, will pursue a master’s degree in China Studies with a concentration in history and archaeology at Yenching Academy.

Pham said leveraging the unique opportunities at Yenching Academy would deepen his undergraduate study of the histories of China and its neighbors to the east and would enhance his future career as a transnational historian of East Asia.

In 2015-16, Pham, who speaks Mandarin, received a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education to support advanced Chinese language and East Asia area studies.

Pham spent successive summers as an undergraduate living and working in Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo through opportunities funded by Stanford.

He won a 2014 Chappell Lougee Scholarship to compare historical representations of modernization in China and South Korea, with emphases on state-affiliated museums, as well as memorials of resistance against the Japanese Empire. He won a 2015 Korea Program Korean Studies Writing Prize for a paper analyzing the role of Japanese companies in fueling South Korea’s rapid economic development during the 1960s and 70s.

Pham also has worked as a research assistant to Michael McFaul, a professor of political science and director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Takeo Hoshi, director of the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He served as a writing tutor at the Hope House Scholars Program, a joint effort between the Program in Ethics in Society and Stanford Continuing Studies.

Rexroad Simons, a senior majoring in international relations, will pursue a master’s degree in China Studies with a concentration in economics and management at Yenching Academy.

Simons, who began studying Mandarin in grammar school, spent fall 2014 studying at Peking University in Beijing through Stanford’s Bing Overseas Studies Program. He said the experience led to two conclusions: He wanted to spend more time studying in China, and he wanted to work in the country after graduating from Stanford.

He served as a Stanford in Beijing Program Ambassador on campus from May 2015 to June 2016. In that role he helped manage and run programs designed to increase student enrollment in the program and he helped interview candidates for program director.

Simons was also a member of the Stanford Alpine Ski Team, a club sport at the university.

Belinda Tang, who earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at Stanford in 2014, will pursue a master’s degree in China Studies with a concentration in literature and culture at Yenching Academy.

Tang, who grew up in a Chinese community in San Jose, Calif., said it is impossible for her to disentangle her experience of being American with being Chinese. She said her feet will always be firmly planted in both cultures, and she will seek a career that includes China.

As co-president of the Forum for American-Chinese Exchange at Stanford, Tang organized a conference that brought together 40 young leaders in Chinese-American relations.

In 2014, Stanford awarded Tang a David M. Kennedy Honors Thesis Prize for her thesis, titled Gender, Policy-making, and Politics: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment in Lesotho, which was based on original research on the implementation of female quota systems in electoral districts in the southern African country of Lesotho. It combined intensive fieldwork and sophisticated econometric analysis.

Currently, Tang is a data analyst at the Milpitas Unified School District, which aims to ensure equity for all students through a personalized learning approach.

Niuniu Z. Teo, a senior majoring in history, with minors in economics and creative writing, will pursue a master’s degree in China Studies with a concentration in public policy and international relations at Yenching Academy.

At Stanford, Teo has cultivated her interest in modern China through coursework and extracurricular activities. She studied China’s state capitalism and public policy and took many classes on modern and late-imperial China.

Teo, who is fluent in Chinese, is writing an honors thesis on Hu Shi (1891-1962), a Chinese scholar and leader, and received a major grant from Stanford’s Undergraduate Advising and Research to conduct research on him during summer 2015.

Teo served as a research assistant on the Chinese Railroad Worker in North America Project, which seeks to give a voice to the Chinese migrants whose labor on the Transcontinental Railroad helped to shape the physical and social landscape of the American West. As a production intern at KQED Radio in San Francisco, she also produced a show about the project that aired on its “Forum” program.

Teo has also reported and written news and feature stories for Stanford Daily.

She is a classical pianist who performed Saint-Saens Piano Concert No. 2 with the Stanford Symphony Orchestra in Bing Concert Hall last February – the prize for winning first place in the 2015 Stanford Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition.

Stanford students who are interested in overseas scholarships or  faculty interested in nominating  students for such awards may contact Diane Murk, manager of the Overseas Resource Center, at dmurk@stanford.edu, or John Pearson, director of the Bechtel International Center, at john.pearson@stanford.edu.