Stories

Jocelyn Chi ’21, a psychology and marketing double major, has close ties to Taiwan, the country where she’ll be a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant this fall. Her parents Ling Ling Chung and Peter Chi emigrated from Taiwan in 1988, becoming a pharmacist and doctor, respectively, and raising Chi and her sister Evelyn in Arcadia, California, near Los Angeles.

“One of the reasons I wanted to apply for a Fulbright in Taiwan was to reconnect with my culture and really work on my Mandarin language skills,” said Chi. She said she learned confidence and honed her cultural-navigation abilities when she studied abroad in Barcelona—even though she didn’t speak Spanish.

Her work for the past three years with the Santa Clara Community Action Project, known on campus as “SCCAP,” also was life-changing, she said. As an Asian-American person with a disability (ADHD),

Chi was drawn to SCCAP’s dedication to activism, compassion, social justice, and awareness of social issues in and around the campus community.

Through SCCAP, Chi volunteered as a teacher's assistant at Chandler Tripp, a San Jose preschool for children with disabilities, then became a program coordinator recruiting SCCAP volunteers. That led to her current role as associate director at SCCAP, working on leadership development and programming such as anti-racist education. “I know that experience will be really important when I’m working in the classroom” in Taiwan, she said.

Chi also is a member of the SCU Orchestra, and plans to bring her violin to Taiwan to teach lessons to her students. She has been a peer advisor for registered student organizations at SCU’s Center for Student Involvement, and served as a student representative on the University’s COVID-19 Resilience and Recovery Working Group. She participated in the Ciocca Center’s Bronco Accelerator Prep School, which helps students with ideas for startups get the information they need to move forward.

About the Fulbright Program
The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The primary source of funding for the Fulbright Program is an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations in foreign countries and in the United States also provide direct and indirect support. Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The program operates in more than 155 countries worldwide. For further information please visit https://us.fulbrightonline.org/.