Many students have passions outside of their studies, but recent Arizona State University graduate Antonieta Carpenter-Cosand leveraged her language and art studies to showcase and teach others about Brazilian culture.

“I started taking Portuguese and got very interested in learning more,” Cosand explained, even though she was already a Spanish literature major, “Spanish is my first language...I started realizing that Latino countries, not only Spanish speaking countries, have a lot in common.” Download Full Image

As part of a class project, Cosand’s exhibit featured four paintings representing Tropicalismo, an influential Brazilian music movement from the 1960s she learned about in a class on contemporary Brazilian art. Cosand displayed her paintings and introduced visitors to the Tropicalismo sound.  

“A lot of people do not see painting now as something so important, it’s not as noticeable as it used to be … people don’t realize the power of visualized art,” said Cosand, who graduated from the School of International Letters and Cultures.

“More than a music movement, [Tropicalismo] was an artistic movement in Brazil,” which Cosand explained was a way to dissent against culture regulations by Brazil’s military dictatorship.

She saw her paintings as a way to advertise this aspect of Brazilian art and history, serving as an entry point to the diversity of Latin American culture.

“The sense we use the most is seeing. If people were more open to seeing art, we could use art in other contexts,” Cosand said. “It connects me to them, and it connects a lot of things. For example, this was about Brazil. I connected a country through painting and their culture and their music to other people who might not even know where Brazil is.”

You can see photos from the event and list to the songs that inspired Cosand’s paintings here.

Arizona State University continues to foster Vietnamese STEM innovation and skill-building with the opening of the Maker Innovation Space in Ho Chi Minh City’s Saigon Hi-Tech Park.

Launched on June 8, the Maker Innovation Space is part of the Building University-Industry Learning and Develop through Innovation and Technology program known as BUILD-IT. This $10.8 million project, funded by the United States Agency for International Development, brings academia, industry and government together to invest in a dynamic ecosystem for STEM innovation in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Arizona State University helped launch the Maker Innovation Space in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, as part of the Building University-Industry Learning and Develop through Innovation and Technology program known as BUILD-IT, which brings academia, industry and government together to invest in a dynamic ecosystem for STEM innovation in Vietnam. Photographer: Quynh Giao Download Full Image

The opening of the Maker Innovation space is an important part of the program to help improve applied curricula and advance innovation and entrepreneurship in Ho Chi Minh City.

“Today, on behalf of the management board of Saigon Hi-Tech Park, I would like to express my happiness and appreciation to USAID, BUILD-IT and Arizona State University, who chose SHTP as one of two sites in Vietnam to build the Maker Innovation Space,” said Le Hoai Quoc, president of Saigon Hi-Tech Park. “This takes a very important part to boost the making and innovation activities of students as well as startup projects. Being prepared with the equipment in the Maker Innovation Space, in a short period of time, young people can design, innovate and make their innovative ideas [into] real products.”

The space provides resources for faculty and students in the many universities near Saigon Hi-Tech Park to access machinery and materials for projects, courses, workshops, entrepreneurial development and industry-led student competitions.

“The Maker Innovation Space will be a place for university students to design, create, prototype, and invent products and services through a variety of entrepreneurial and curricular platforms being introduced through the BUILD IT Alliance,” said Jeffrey Goss, associate vice provost for Southeast Asia Programs at ASU and executive director of Global Outreach and Extended Education. “We will partner with industry, local community based organizations, and university partners to launch service oriented programs, such as Engineering Programs in Community Service (EPICS), industry-sponsored eProjects, hackathons, design thinking competitions, and senior design capstone projects.“

On June 4, thirty middle and high school students arrived at Arizona State University to kick off the ninth annual ASU Startalk Chinese Language Summer Camp.

The camp marks an opportunity for Arizona’s brightest students to come together and develop their Chinese-language skills and cultural understanding. From the day they set foot on the ASU campus, students are immersed in the Chinese language and culture. Students remain at the camp twenty-four hours a day, sleeping in campus dormitories, eating with camp staff and other students, and engaging in full slate of daily activities. Lasting for a total of fifteen days, the camp offers a unique learning environment for its participants who came from nineteen schools in ten cities around the state, Participants pose with the fruits of their labor after practicing calligraphy during Startalk 2017. Download Full Image

The core activity of the camp is Chinese-language instruction. Students spend several hours a day in Chinese classes taught by experienced area instructors and teaching assistants. Classes, which range from the beginner to the intermediate level, are organized around a yearly camp theme. This year’s theme, “Let’s Plan a Family Reunion Trip to China,” places emphasis on giving students the ability to plan travel in Chinese-speaking countries. Students create a travel planner and carry out a variety of in-class activities and presentations based on the camp theme. Students also have individualized tutoring sessions with teaching assistants in the evenings.

Classes are conducted almost entirely in Chinese, forcing students to develop their listening and speaking skills. While full language immersion can be difficult for language learners of any age, learning alongside other highly-motivated students helps create a positive and cooperative educational environment for camp participants, and students note the improvement they make as the camp progresses. At the end of the camp, students create a poster and a slide show presentation advertising a vacation to one of their favorite Chinese cities.

Language instruction, however, is only the beginning of camp activities. Afternoons include hands-on cultural activities with topics such as dance, calligraphy and Chinese knots. Students also participate in evening activities such as Chinese movies and games, and are introduced to a variety of foods through Chinese lunches, a dumpling-making activity and a "fear factor" food-tasting game.

Guest instructors also join the camp to conduct cultural activities; for instance, a disciple of a Shaolin master visited campus this week to give a martial arts class for students. Through these activities, students gain exposure to different aspects of Chinese culture, while learning and practicing specialized Chinese vocabulary related to each activity.

Participants and staff of Startalk 2017 take a break during the intensive fifteen-day program.

 One highlight of the week is an off-campus trip to Mekong Plaza in Mesa. After beginning the day with a dim sum brunch, students are sent on a scavenger hunt at the plaza supermarket. As with other camp activities, students must use their newly-acquired language skills to complete the activity, seeking out a list of Chinese foods and drinks from the variety of items on display at the market. The Mekong field trip gives students an opportunity to utilize their learning in the "real world."

On the last day of the camp, students celebrate and share their progress with friends, family and teachrs by putting on a performance. One aspect of the performance is the presentation of group projects on China’s major cities, done entirely by the students in Chinese. In addition, each does a song and dance number. 

According to program director Xia Zhang, the camp is an enjoyable and valuable experience for students.

“This program strives to provide students with the best learning experience by immersing them in an intensive yet fun environment,” Zhang said. “I hope that through this program, students not only learn a foreign language but also learn to better appreciate another culture.”

After the camp concludes, students will use what they’ve learned as a springboard for further Chinese-language study at their respective schools and colleges. Apart from building their language skills and cultural understanding, students gain exposure to university campus life and build friendships with classmates that last beyond the camp.

Startalk is a presidential initiative funded by the National Security Agency that seeks to expand and improve the instruction and learning of strategically important languages such as Chinese. For the ninth consecutive year, the School of International Letters and Cultures at ASU was selected by the Startalk Central to host the Chinese Language Summer Camp. The camp is largely funded by the U.S. government, and students pay only a nominal fee to attend. Arizona students can apply to attend the camp in the spring of each year.

More information on the camp can be found at silc.clas.asu.edu/content/startalk-program or on the program Facebook page at facebook.com/asustartalk/.

While newscasts and political discourse seem to highlight a divided word, an Arizona State University doctoral student student has found cultural overlap between Christianity, Judaism and Islam in her Spanish hometown.

“I’m from the south [of Spain], in Cordoba, which is really influenced by different religions,” said Edurne Beltran de Heredia Carmona, who also works as a Spanish teaching assistant, “I basically grew up in a Muslim community, and had many friends who were Jewish. I like to see how we can influence each other and learn from each other.” Edurne Beltran de Heredia Carmona Download Full Image

Through examining different books, such as “The Street of the Jewish Quarter”, “In the last Blue” and “The Hand of Fatima,” Carmona has demonstrated the peace and struggle different Spanish religious communities have shared. She presented some of her work at the 20th SPAgrad Literature Conference last March.

Since then, she has focused her thesis on the influence of Judaism and Islam on Spanish and Latin American literature.

“From what I read, they were living together, Jews, Christians, Muslims, with some obstacles of course,” Carmona explained, “but they were really living together peacefully for centuries. We should think about it.”

At ASU's School of International Letters and Cultures (SILC), Carmona found an academic community ready to support her research goals, enabling her work to take on complexity and depth.

“I like at SILC that it’s a very interdisciplinary department,” Carmona said, “The university itself is very interdisciplinary, so I could focus my research into different things, also with different departments.”

This environment has enabled her to research Arabic and Islamic studies, Jewish studies, gender studies and more. That Carmona speaks English, Spanish, Basque, German and some Arabic also helps.

Her work has been well received. Recently, Encyclopaedia Palgrave selected her work, “Jewish and Arabic urbanism in Spanish literature” for publication.

An overview of her SPAgrad presentation described Carmona as, “a very proud activist for a multicultural society and she believes everyone should know and accept each other despite different religions.”

Carmona’s interests in overlapping communities aligns with her own background. In addition to living in Spain, she has lived in England, Washington State and now Arizona. She “understands what it is to be a foreigner,” but sees it as an advantage.

“I have lived in different communities and have friends from all over the world,” Carmona said. “I have been exposed to the reality of other people.”

Editor's note: The ASU community, mindful of Arizona’s place in Indian Country and the university’s location on the ancestral homelands of the Akimel O'odham and Pee Posh peoples, aspires to support Native students and tribes in developing futures of their own making. Last week’s story “ASU American Indian Studies Program trains advocates for indigenous communities” discussed AIS’s focus on partnerships to strengthen communities. This story spotlights the ways that one course, AIS 440: Cultural Professionalism, contributes to that effort.

When Arizona State University graduating senior Kendall Cody walked across the stage at the university’s American Indian Convocation on May 10, she carried with her an admittedly big passion: “getting more people to pursue and complete higher education.” ASU graduating senior Kendall Cody discusses her proposal for a pre-college program for high schoolers, "“Gila River’s Life Long Learners." Cody and classmates in AIS 440: Cultural Professionalism showcased their work in ASU’s seventh annual Creating Visions for Future Nations Research Symposium, presenting their proposals in a poster-session format at the close of ASU’s annual American Indian Student Success Forum on March 21, 2017. Photo by Lyonel Tso Download Full Image

She also left ASU with solid experience and confidence in directing that passion to make an impact.

Cody worked as a peer coach for the past two years with ASU’s First-Year Success Center, encouraging other students to make it to the graduation finish line and to discover ways to make the most of their college journey: “I absolutely loved my job, so it never felt like work,” said Cody, who graduated May 8 with a major in psychological science and a minor in American Indian studies.

In the spring semester, as part of the course American Indian Studies 440: Cultural Professionalism, Cody chose a project to encourage and support kids’ readiness to apply and be admitted to post-secondary education, laying out the design for a four-year college-application program to support high schoolers in the Gila River Indian Community, south of Phoenix.  

In AIS 440, students draw on the ASU Libraries’ Labriola National American Indian Data Center and other sources to research the demographics and contemporary issues of Arizona’s 22 sovereign tribes. They then design a community development proposal directly connected to meeting one challenge in one Native nation or tribe beyond their home communities.

“An important U.S. Census statistic for Gila River that stood out in doing my background research was that 1.6 percent of adults indicated bachelor’s degree attainment,” said Cody, who is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation.

She designed an extra-curricular program that would break down the higher-education application process into identifiable steps, mapping out goals and activities for youth from freshman through senior year.

“By first semester of their senior year, students would be ready to apply to at least three different colleges or universities,” Cody explained. “I suggested activities to support students’ not only having a strong application, but becoming a more holistic person by that time as well.”

When she and her AIS 440 classmates showcased their proposals in a poster session in March, Cody’s project, “Gila River’s Life Long Learners,” received this year’s undergraduate “community vote” for the project that symposium guests consider most innovative and practical.

That honor includes an award from the Princeton Review valued at $2,799, for an in-person test-prep course that Cody intends to use in advance of graduate school admissions exams. 

Perhaps most noteworthy, at semester’s end Cody was contacted by a member of the Gila River Indian Community to schedule a meeting to discuss the possibility of implementing her project idea.

Undergraduate and graduate student participants in the AIS 440 poster symposium posed with Laura Gonzales-Macias and Miss Indian ASU 2015-2016 Jennifer R. Jones. From left: Nicholet Deschene Parkhurst, Jameson D. Lopez, Ferrin Brown Wolf, Matthew Yatsayte, Kyle Howe, Davis E. Henderson, Summer Kirk, Martisha Clyde, Kendall Cody, Marcene Hoover-Bennett, Kelly Lee, Laura Gonzales-Macis, Jennifer R. Jones, Latifah Pailzote, Sarahna Cooper, and Kayla DeVault.

Creating visions for future nations    

“One of the key pieces of the American Indian Studies paradigm at ASU is strengthening communities, and at the core of this class is the use-inspired research assignment based in helping our families and communities,” said Laura Gonzales-Macias, who regularly teaches the course and also serves as associate director of American Indian Student Support Services in ASU’s University College.

The community development project proposal and the learning experiences that support it are the focus for about two months, she noted.

Students do a literature review, write a full research paper describing their review and project proposal, make an in-class slideshow presentation, and prepare and present at the annual poster symposium, “Creating Visions for Future Nations.”   

The course, she said, was developed seven years ago with American Indian Studies Professors John Tippeconnic III and James Riding In. They designed an experience in which students can explore indigenous perspectives on communication, research and professional and leadership skills.

In addition, students can prepare for what comes next in their journey: building a track record in the kind of research and presentations required in graduate school; fine-tuning their resumes; setting and meeting goals for employment, internships or graduate applications; and beginning to build a professional network across tribal communities.

Over the years, she said, the course has continued to evolve in partnership with the students — and the overlap and connections that have grown between students and community mentors have been especially enriching.

Mentoring extends connections

Some mentors visit the class as presenters; others assist with project ideas, Gonzales-Macias explained.

“Once students decide on a community development project proposal, they’re matched with a research mentor — someone from the community or a graduate student or faculty member with expertise related to the project,” she said.

“We partner with ASU’s American Indian Graduate Student Association to match students with a graduate or professional student,” she continued, “and we are so fortunate to have a host of community mentors who generously engage with students in the course.”

Kendall Cody, for example, was matched with ASU graduate student Dorothy Rhodes, executive intern for the lieutenant governor of the Gila River Indian Community, who could share knowledge and suggest resources. (Rhodes graduated May 8 with a master’s degree in liberal studies.) 

Cody said that Ak-Chin Indian Community Councilwoman Delia Carlyle’s guest presentation in AIS 440 also influenced how she shaped her project proposal.

“In addition to talking about Ak-Chin’s approach to self-governance and some of its exciting business partnerships, Ms. Carlyle shared her story with us. She wasn’t the best student in high school and other barriers popped up along her life journey, and so it was only recently that she earned her associate’s degree,” she said. “Despite all of those things that happened, she still has a very powerful leadership positon and is helping others in her community.

“A lot of students start fixating on whether they might mess up, or they think that if they haven’t finished a degree in four years they’ve failed,” Cody said. “Her remarks were a reminder to make sure that my programming for high school students would dispel those myths that stress a lot of people out and emphasize that working toward some post-secondary training to support what they want to do in life is the main goal.”

Other community leaders who presented to students this semester were LuAnn Leonard, former Arizona Board of Regent and executive director of the Hopi Education Endowment Fund, Hopi Tribe; Arizona House Democrats Indigenous Peoples Caucus members Rep. Sally Ann Gonzales, D-Tucson (District 3) and Rep. Eric Descheenie, D-Chinle (District 7); and Robin Enos, human resources director, and Crystal Banuelos, community employment manager, with the Salt River Pima–Maricopa Indian Community.  

Banuelos, a 2003 ASU graduate, said she has enjoyed being a community presenter in AIS 440 for five years, sharing insights about preparedness for the job search and professionalism. 

“I try to give students guidance and confidence about how they can be the best potential candidate, in whatever area that interests them, and encourage them to grow those behaviors that will make them the best employee after being hired,” Banuelos said, “focusing on being a team player, being willing to go above and beyond, and being communicative.”

“I also talk with students about where the workforce is going or areas that might have longevity,” she said. “That may spark ideas for some individuals as they make the determination of the path that’s best for them.” 

This spring semester, built into the AIS 440 course, was an opportunity for the students to be mentors themselves and build additional connections. 

“We have a business etiquette dinner as part of the course, and this semester Tohono O’odham Community College (TOCC) staff and high school students in the START program, a TOCC pre-college outreach program, came up from Sells to join us for the dinner session at Tempe Mission Palms hotel,” said Gonzales-Macias. “Students in my class as well as other ASU Native students enjoyed meeting and giving advice to Tohono O’odham youth.” 

Laying the foundation for a professional career

Three years ago ASU alumna Waynette Taylor took AIS 440 with Gonzales-Macias as a senior and completed a proposal for a community development project titled “Live Well, Be Well: A Holistic Approach to Treating Diabetic and Obese Individuals in the Salt River Pima–Maricopa Indian Community.”

She proposed a holistic, culturally sensitive approach to educating newly diagnosed diabetic and obese patients and put her central emphasis on an effective treatment plan developed by a comprehensive health-care team.

Taylor sees the course and that project proposal as laying a foundation for her career. 

“I knew Laura’s class was going to be great, but I didn’t realize the full impact it would have on my life,” she said.

“I decided eight years ago that I wanted to become a physician assistant, the first in my extended family to ever pursue a medical career, but I didn’t have any idea about how I’d become a medical provider.”

At ASU she fell in love with her major — biological sciences — and she became a leader in the student organization PANAL (Pre-Health Association of Native American Leaders).

“In completing the community development proposal in AIS 440, I discovered how I could make an impact in a community. The project only intensified the amount of passion I had for diabetes-related work,” said Taylor, whose mother and several other family members cope with the disease.

She credits AIS 440, and all the commitment that she put into the class, for her securing an internship with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) the summer after she graduated, and for her ability to perform at a competitive level in the position.

“I was more confident in my research and was more familiar with how to summarize my work to NIH scientists,” said Taylor, who asked as an intern that she be allowed to focus on diabetes.

“My individual project focused on identifying the genetic determinants of Type 2 diabetes among the Pima Indians,” she said. “In the genetic laboratory of the NIDDK, a branch of the NIH, I helped to identify variants predicted to be deleterious in biological candidate genes, validated those sequences, genotyped, then submitted them for analysis to determine if these variants could affect risk for T2D. I would not have been as confident as I was in the delivery of my research if it were not for the experience I had gained in AIS 440.”  

Since earning her degree in 2014 she became a patient-care assistant at Banner Desert Medical Center and cared for diabetic patients, to learn more about the real-life complications and co-morbidities associated with the disease. Taylor now works for Indian Health Services in a behavioral health facility as a counselor aide to at-risk adolescents, helping them to rebuild their lives. 

“I still keep in touch with some of the community leaders who served as mentors and guest speakers in the course,” she said, “and when I read or hear the names of others in the news or in my work I’ll have that feeling of connection.”  

Taylor said the AIS 440 poster symposium has become an event around which alumni of the course and current students, faculty and staff coalesce.

“I attended the AIS 440 poster symposium last year and was very impressed with the students’ work. Now as an alum I’m totally supportive of the students and want to be a part of the symposiums in the future, letting students know it’s possible for them to implement their work in Native communities.” 

She has accepted a place in Northern Arizona University’s physician assistant professional graduate program for fall. Taylor said she used the Princeton Review scholarship she earned as the “community vote” winner in the 2014 AIS 440 poster session to help prepare for the GRE. 

“Dr. Gonzales-Macias is a remarkable individual. I have a lot of appreciation for her because of how much of an impact she has made on my life,” Taylor said of her mentor and former teacher. “My career aspirations are to return home to the Navajo and Hopi reservations as a physician assistant to care for individuals who are affected by diabetes. I believe that a program like the one I proposed in AIS 440 could make a real difference in any community, and it is my personal goal to see it come to life.”

Inspiring new passions 

When the spring 2017 AIS 440 students made their final class presentation as a group, gathering with community leaders for an end-of-semester celebration and formal dinner at Tempe Mission Palms on May 2, undergraduate Ferrin Brown Wolf reflected on the transformation he felt in himself over the semester.

Exclusively made up of indigenous professors, the American Indian Studies program at Arizona State University motivates the next generation of scholars to advocate for Indigenous nations and communities.

“We’re striving to make American Indian Studies not only important and relevant to Native nations, organizations and peoples, but also to society as a whole,” said James Riding In (Pawnee), professor and interim director of the program. Professor Myla Vicenti-Carpio presents the Dean’s Medal to American Indian Studies and filming graduate Cameron Mundo during the American Indian Convocation in spring 2016. Photo by Deanna Dent/ASU Now Download Full Image

The curriculum for undergraduate and graduate students focuses on American Indian experiences, human rights and social justice, giving students a practical and theoretical understanding of complex issues facing American Indian communities across the U.S. and Indigenous communities around the world. 

The value of an American Indian Studies degree

“There are several values to our degree,” said Riding In. “It provides students with critical thinking and academic skills as well as knowledge of American Indian nations in both a historical and contemporary context.”

According to Riding In, American Indian Studies is broadly concerned with aspects of the human experience. As such, a student pursuing a degree, minor or certificate in American Indian Studies would gain an education rooted in humanistic ideals and social sciences methods. This dual structure helps students acquire analytical and critical-thinking skills, cultural expertise in American Indian affairs and a broad skillset applicable to a range of careers — especially in fields working with Indian nations or underprivileged/marginalized communities.

Graduates have gone to law school and doctoral programs all over the country. Given the academic nature of the subject, many pursue careers within Indian communities to help find solutions for the complex challenges facing these nations. Recent graduates have launched careers with the International Treaty Council, the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community and the local government. 

For example, alumna Madison Fulton (Navajo), who works for the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, said her education in American Indian Studies was instrumental in getting her to where she is now. She said exposure to caring and influential professors, American Indian Studies theory and thought, and engagement through discussion prepared her to work with tribes.

“The American Indian Studies paradigm and canon are the most important aspect of my education,” she said. “The canon has given me the knowledge to be an advocate for Indian rights in terms of sexual assault advocacy, ethical research, and health and wellbeing of Indian communities and people.” 

American Indian Studies scholarship and impact

The American Indian Studies faculty at ASU have produced scholarship that is shaping the discourse on Indigenous issues today. Their research and publications range from the sacred histories of various Indigenous peoples to the contemporary problems faced by American Indian communities, such as: American Indian child and adolescent issues, graves protection, decolonization and spiritual beliefs.

Furthermore, the program is home to a peer-reviewed journal that publishes work by American Indian scholars from around the country.

Wíčazo Ša Review is an interdisciplinary academic journal devoted to publishing American Indian scholarship. The journal was started in 1985 by founding editors Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Beatrice Medicine, Roger Buffalohead and William Willard. Professor James Riding In (Pawnee) has been the editor-in-chief of Wíčazo Ša Review since 2005. 

The Review fits well within the paradigm of the American Indian Studies program, which states: “American Indian Studies faculty must view their teaching, research and service as a ‘sacred’ responsibility to Indian nations undertaken for the sake of cultural survival.”

“Most of the journals were those that come from the fields of history, anthropology and others,” Riding In said. “And it was very difficult oftentimes for indigenous scholars to get their work published because oftentimes their work fell outside of the realm of what many of those gatekeepers who were in charge of those disciplines thought was pertinent scholarship.”

Riding In said the journal’s most important function today is to provide an outlet for indigenous scholars to get their work published. He emphasized how valuable such an outlet is for young native faculty working in universities across the country.

With Arizona having the second largest Native American population of any state, Indian affairs is an area in demand from both the U.S. federal government and the Indian tribes themselves. The American Indian Studies program strives to partner with Indian nations, communities and organizations to seek solutions for the unique challenges faced by American Indian nations.

“ASU continues to develop an impressive cohort of scholars engaged in American Indian cultural, social, educational, legal and economic issues. We have built world-class programs in American Indian Studies, American Indian legal Studies and Indigenous conceptions of justice,” said President Michael Crow in a 2015 statement on the university’s commitment to American Indian tribes. “Our work, however, is not complete. We must further … integrate Indigenous knowledge and engage Indigenous issues globally.” 

Arizona State University students Samantha Sanders and Ryan Featherston are championship winners in the 16th Annual Chinese Bridge Chinese Proficiency Competition held April 29 at the University of Arizona.

The preliminary contest in the southwest region for the competition for foreign college students was organized by the Chinese Consulate General in Los Angeles in cooperation with the Confucius Institute at Arizona State University. Education Councillor Yuan Dong and Education Consul Chai Haiying were the honored guests in attendance.   Samantha Sanders and Ryan Featherston Download Full Image

Sanders and Featherston won the championships in the intermediate and advanced level competitions, respectively, through their enthusiasm and passion for learning Chinese language and culture. Featherston will represent the southwest region of the United States and advance to the international level of the Chinese Bridge Competition hosted in China by the Confucius Institute headquarters this July.

College students from the southwest region, which includes Arizona, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Southern California, are representatives of the Confucius Institute to participate in the competition. Each year, participants’ Chinese proficiency are assessed through three rounds of competition. In the first round, participants present a three-minute speech in Chinese relating to the theme of “Dreams Enlighten the Future,” followed by impromptu questions about the content of their speeches from the judges. During the second round, contestants are quizzed on Chinese culture, geography, and history. In the final round, a Chinese cultural talent show allow participants to prepare a live performance showcasing their talents through music, calligraphy, painting, dance, or martial arts.

Featherston impressed the judges with his fluency and dream of becoming a cross-cultural ambassador. He is currently in the ASU Chinese Language Flagship Program in School of International Letters and Cultures and majoring in economics. In his speech, Featherston described his experience living and studying in China after high school graduation. He started his journey to learn Chinese by living with a host family in Beijing, tasting Chinese foods, meeting Chinese friends and familiarizing himself with the Chinese customs, philosophies and values.

He recognized the cultural differences between China and the U.S. during the birthday celebration of his “younger brother” in China. He was surprised to witness the birthday boy present slices of cake to the elders and guests first while serving himself last. In the United States, the birthday person is always the center of attention and usually the first person to get a slice of cake. This experience enlightened his interest and enthusiasm in cross-cultural awareness and communication. Featherston believes misunderstandings happen, but everyone can learn from misunderstandings and modify their behavior to show respect to each other. His career goal is to become a cross-cultural ambassador or business envoy between China and U.S. 

In his talent show performance, Featherston demonstrated his talents in singing, poem recitation, and playing the flute. He sang a Chinese song titled “Wishing We Last Forever” and then recited “Water Melody: When Did the Bright Moon First Appear?” He finished the song with a flute performance.

Sanders is also a student in the ASU Chinese Language Flagship Program in the School of International Letters and Cultures. After her second year of Chinese study at ASU, she was awarded a Flagship scholarship to study abroad program in Taiwan for two months. Since then, she has visited Beijing and Shanghai as well and collected rich memories and experiences from all of her travels. She loved the historical and cultural sites in Beijing and was impressed by the modernization in Shanghai, and has not forgotte the delicious food from Taiwanese night markets.  

In her speech, she discussed her dream to start a nonprofit organization to protect the environment. This inspiration came from her observation of how almost all Chinese people use eco bags and take public transportation. Sanders reinforced the idea of how there is only one earth in the universe, therefore, it is humans’ responsibility to protect earth so the next generation can have a wonderful future. For her talent show performance, she further impressed the judges and audience by singing a Chinese song, “A Merrily Loving Song.”

Featherston is the third ASU student to place first in the advanced level of the Chinese Bridge Competition in the SW region. Jonny Dangerfield, an ASU Flagship alumnus, and Ryan McCloskey, an ASU computer science major with a minor in Chinese, were both first place winners in 2013 and 2015.