Yale-China Association Selects 6 New Yale-China Fellows of 2024

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (June 6, 2024) – Five Yale seniors and one recent alumnus were selected as Yale-China Fellows for the Yale-China Association's longstanding Yale-China Fellowship program.

The Yale-China Association, a private, nonprofit organization located on the Yale campus, bridges the United States and China through collaborative partnerships in education, healthcare, and the arts. More information about Yale-China can be found on its website at www.yalechina.org.

The new Yale-China Fellows, who will begin their appointments this summer, will teach academic writing and oral English courses, and lecture on American history and culture to Chinese university and high school students and teachers. Throughout their two-year assignments, they will also study Chinese language and culture and carry out community engagement projects.

Fellows are chosen from a competitive pool of applicants for their interest in furthering understanding between Chinese and Americans, their teaching ability, academic achievement, and commitment to community service.

The six graduates who have been named as Yale-China Fellows are:

“This year’s group comes from a variety of backgrounds and interests, including software design, medicine and public health, law, creative writing, and East Asian studies.” says Leslie Stone, Vice President and Director of Education Programs, Yale-China director of student programs. “Although the new Fellows have diverse interests, the selection committee noted that all six Fellows share a common dedication to education and interest in learning about China while living and working at our partner institutions. We are extremely excited about the potential of this year’s group, and we look forward to welcoming them to the greater Yale-China community.”

Annette Kim and Adam Zapatka will be teaching English and leading extracurricular activities at Yali High School in Changsha, Hunan province. Kim, an Ethnicity, Race and Migration major is from Cresskill, New Jersey. At Yale, she has served as a member of the Yale Women’s Leadership Initiative and led the Yale Model United Nations to Korea. Kim was a project development coordinator for Elena’s Light, which supports Afghan refugee women in greater New Haven and taught at Yale Bridges ESL, providing free English lessons for immigrants in New Haven. She has also worked to compile census data on Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) populations in Connecticut. Zapatka, an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science major from Avon, Connecticut, was a member of the Yale Swimming Team. He served as an undergraduate learning assistant teaching CPSC 100, a seminar on computer science and as a research assistant in the computer science department. He was also a software engineering intern at Sloan Memorial Kettering Cancer Center and a lead organizer for Yale Swim New Haven, teaching New Haven children to swim.

Cheryl Chen and Sam Pekats will teach academic courses for English majors and lecture on American history and culture at The Chinese University of Hong Kong as well as carry out community engagement projects. Chen, a Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology major from Seattle, Washington was a first-year counselor at Berkeley College. She was also a COP28 United Nations Climate Change Conference delegate, a student researcher in Yale’s Department of Immunobiology and head coordinator at Yale Community Kitchen, serving local food-insecure people on a weekly basis. Pekats, an East Asian Studies major from New Rochelle, New York, was a member of Community Health Educators providing health education at New Haven Public Schools. He was a research intern at the Committee of 100, crafting a national survey on Chinese Americans, and at the Sino-Israel Global Network. He is currently in Beijing as a Yenching Scholar at Beijing University’s Yenching Academy. Pekats spent a summer studying Mandarin in Beijing through the Richard U. Light Fellowship and a summer at The Chinese University of Hong Kong studying Cantonese with funding from the Lustman Memorial Fellowship.

Elijah Boles and Harrison Muth will teach English and lead extracurricular activities at Xiuning Middle School, a rural high school in Anhui province. Boles, a philosophy major from Evensville, Tennessee, has been involved in music and debate over the entire course of his time at Yale. He worked at Main Stage Music providing free guitar lessons to local youth and organized community events for Hearthside Hospice. He also served as a contracts intern at BAE Systems, Inc and was a research assistant for Special Competitive Research Projects investigating regulatory reform and technology collaboration. Muth, a humanities and economics major from Langley Park, Maryland, co-founded Veritas Education, a summer liberal arts academy for middle and high school students. He has fundraised and served as a camp counselor for Camp Kesem, a weeklong camp for children of parents with cancer. He conducted research for the Hudson Institute and served as an intern for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee

These six newly selected Yale-China Fellows will be joining the six rising second year Yale-China Fellows: Julia Arancio, 23, Alison Brown, 23, Angelreana Choi ’23, Kevin Li ’23, Taylor Triplett ’23, and Isabella Zou ‘23, bringing the total number of Yale-China Fellows serving in China in 2024-25 to twelve. These Fellows are playing an important role in supporting U.S.-China people-to-people dialogue and understanding at a time when just 800 or so American students are in China.

The Yale-China Fellowship is open to Yale graduating seniors and to any Yale graduate for up to five years after graduation. Graduate students are also eligible to apply. For more information about the fellowship, contact Kate Rosenberg, Yale-China senior program officer at katherine.rosenberg@yale.edu.

From left to right: Boles, Kim, Zapatka, Chen, and Muth, with a cardboard cutout of Pekats