Holly Hoang Awarded Fulbright ETA in South Korea

Holly Hoang, a history major from Ellicott City, Maryland, has received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in South Korea. Hoang will be living and working in the country from July 2017 to July 2018.

Hoang applied for the Fulbright program because she believes it “offers room for experimentation.” She stresses that although she is excited to participate in the English Teaching Assistantship, she is eager to expand her sights beyond the program, and take advantage of all the opportunities available to her during a year abroad.

“I want to grow in other capacities by pursuing small independent research projects and doing volunteer work with communities beyond the school I will be teaching in,” Hoang says. “I liked that Fulbright’s program structure is flexible in allowing room for scholars to choose how to navigate their grant year.”

While at Oberlin, Hoang worked closely with professor Renee Romano to conduct research on nisei, or young Japanese Americans, who left their respective incarceration camps to attend Oberlin as students during the war period. The research will culminate in a traveling exhibit that is set to make its way across the United States, and it will be presented in Oberlin during the 2017-2018 academic year.

As a student, Hoang also served as the treasurer and historian of the Asian American Alliance (AAA), co-chair of the Vietnamese Student Association (VS), and treasurer of Oberlin College Taiko. She also helped organize events including Asian Night Market, the Midwest Asian American Student Conference, and the Asia America Art Collective.

Hoang has only traveled out of the country once before to family living in China. “I’m incredibly excited to be traveling internationally again,” she says. Hoang does not yet know what city she will be placed in for the fellowship, but has submitted her preference forms and is eagerly awaiting a decision.

“I’m just as curious as you are about where I will be living and working for the next year!” she says.