Association of Chinese Americans, Inc.
密西根美华协会
November 13, 2018
35th High School Achievement Award Banquet

On Sunday, November 11 th , the Association of Chinese Americans held its 35 th High School Scholarship Award Banquet at the Chinese Community Center. 39 local Chinese American high school senior students, who will enter college next year, were recognized. There were more than 80 people in attendance, which included the honorees, honoree’s families, scholarship sponsors, and ACA board and staff members.


All scholarship applicants had to submit a written application and meet with the selection committee to obtain the official invitation from ACA Scholarship Program to participate in the award banquet. According to the written materials of the applicants, the official transcripts from the school and the interview results, the ACA Scholarship Selection Committee evaluated each student according to the different requirements of each scholarship category. It was a difficult selection process this year as all of the candidates were competitively outstanding in terms of academic achievements, community participation and contributions, extracurricular ability and other achievements. After a rigorous selection, 15 of the 39 candidates were awarded scholarships.

35th annual high school achievement award winners to all award categories are:

  • ACA All-around Scholarship $1,000: Jessica Guo (Canton High School)
  • ACA All-around Scholarship $500: Jamie Fu (Novi High School)
  • Mabel Peng Memorial Scholarship $500: Collin Wang (Detroit Country Day School)
  • Siak Scholarship $1,000: Isaac Fong (Canton High School)
  • Andy Wong Memorial Scholarship $1,000: Timothy Wu (Northville High School)
  • Leon Zheng Scholarship $500 each: Hanchi Zhang (Troy High School) and Emma Pinnell (Pioneer High School)
  • Ya-Chun Tao Chen Memorial Scholarship for First Generation Immigrant $1,000 each: Yujie Wang (Troy High School) and Aaron Feng (Troy High School)
  • Ya-Chun Tao Chen All-Around Memorial Scholarship $500: Jonathan Zhang (Armand Hammer United World College of the American West)
  • O.S. Chan Scholarship for Athletic Achievement $1,000: Elizabeth Lu (Salem High School）
  • O.S. Chan/ACA Scholarship for Fine Arts $1,000: Annie Wang (Pioneer High School)
  • 168 Group Scholarship $500: Leon Chen (Novi High School)
  • Page Toyota/Page Honda Scholarship for Outstanding Community Service $500: Marvin Jiang (Troy High School) and Anna Sun (Detroit Country Day School)

Shenlin Chen, Vice President of ACA and Scholarship Committee Chair, hosted the banquet. The president of ACA Roland Hwang, a former Assistant Attorney General in the Michigan Department of Attorney General, who currently teaches Asian American history at University of Michigan, was the keynote.  In his encouraging speech, Roland talked about his own experiences of growing up in the United States, with which he urged those young generations to familiarize themselves with the roots of the Chinese American experience, and the long adversarial history of civil rights struggle. He also encouraged those senior high students who are about to enter college to dare to embrace their dreams and enthusiasm, and dare to choose wisely by listening to their own hearts, knowing that accepting any arrangements or merely chasing money will not give them any long lasting careers. Furthermore, Roland emphasized that after entering college, a diversified study and widely elective courses to explore and discover their true interests were keys to open the doors to their future fulfillment. Lastly but not least important, large amount of reading, as much as 200 pages per day can be expected, so do not fall behind, because it is hard to catch up. 


In the past 35 years, Association of Chinese Americans has recognized nearly 700 local outstanding Chinese American high school students and awarded more than 200 scholarships to the total of $160,000. All donations from sponsors are 100% distributed to the winning students. The Association of Chinese Americans is proud to have this long history of meaningful youth education-related program and deeply believe this year by year investments are worthy and expect very positive impacts on our next generations for a greater cause.

This year's scholarship selection committee was chaired by Shenlin Chen, vice president of ACA. The selection committee included Roland Hwang, Sue Sung, Wei Wang and Charles Liu. ACA is very grateful to have this selection committee for their hard work in the application review process. A special Thank You to the ceremony preparation team: board members Sharon Dow’s event booklet, Charles Liu’s photography; the administration supporting team from ACA led by Director Joyce Li; and whole heartful appreciation to our passionate scholarship donors: John and Lilian Siak, Stephen Peng, Leon Zheng, Lisa Wong and Family, Tai Chan, Esther Chung, Cynthia Yin, 168 Group (Cindy Wang), and Page Toyota / Page Honda (Jue Wang). We hope, in the near future, to have more sponsors from organizations, companies and individuals join to this rewarding  program and establish more scholarship categories for outstanding Chinese American students in order for our next generation to have a brighter future.

All information of the ACA 36th High School Achievement Award Class 2020 will be announced in April 2019. You are welcome to follow ACA’s news platform for detailed information. We are looking forward to another great year! 


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Association of Chinese Americans, Inc.
313-831-1790 / 248-585-9343
info@acadetroit.org
WeChat @ acamichigan