Knowledge is a power that can’t be taken away
Student spotlight: Felicia Chong

-- Lindsay Wynne

After growing up in a foreign country, moving to the United States can be a difficult adjustment for some students. Felicia Chong has embraced that challenge and all the opportunities that go with it. When she’s not pursuing her studies, Chong advocates for volunteerism. During high school in Malaysia, all students were required to volunteer as an extracurricular activity. Chong chose to concentrate her efforts on the Red Crescent Society, Malaysia’s version of the American Red Cross. Besides giving her a basic understanding of first aid, the experience transformed her into an emerging leader, someone who looks for ways to improve the world around her.

Felicia Chong

Shortly after arriving in Minneapolis, Chong became involved in the Solar Oven Society, a group that provides alternative heating equipment for impoverished countries where access to traditional heating equipment is limited. Volunteers work as a team to prepare the individual components of these ovens for people in countries such as Zambia, Afghanistan and Guatemala. Chong appreciates the struggles these people face to simply feed their families. She says, “They have to walk miles and miles to collect firewood, and inhale the terrible smoke that is produced by burning logs, which causes lung cancer, eye disease and burns.”

Chong moved from Malaysia to the United States in 2001, and became immediately aware of the educational and employment differences. She began working in the university’s Records Office, and she now works as a graduate assistant in the Department of Communication, Writing and the Arts. Her impression is that advancement in the U.S. has a lot to do with connections. Although she realizes that hard work helps a person obtain those contacts, she says good contacts do not always guarantee success in Malaysia. Similarly, the education system in Malaysia is very high performance, with a focus on measuring student development via exams. She finds that American schools tend to be more student-focused, and stress the application of knowledge rather than memorization.

Chong has completed an undergraduate degree in professional communication at Metropolitan State University and is now pursuing her masters in technical communication. Exposure to both visual and written communications has shown her how to convey her message effectively using all types of media.

She focused on media studies during her undergraduate program, which exposed her to visual communication and media production. This led to an internship at Twin Cities Public Television and her responsibilities ranged from tape logging and transcription to technical support on several episodes of the weekly public affairs program, “Almanac.” “The ‘behind-the-scenes’ actions were awesome,” she said. “I saw people running around with props, cameras and wires. That was probably the highlight of my internship.”

Although Chong doesn’t plan a career in media production, the experience taught her perseverance. From inception to broadcast, a typical non-profit television production can take two to three years to complete. Chong now realizes the truth: the behind-the-scenes support is really hard work, and it’s not as glamorous as the work that goes on in front of the camera.

Education is the main focus of Chong’s future, and she plans to pursue her Ph.D. She says, “Education is an important part of my life because knowledge is power, and it is something that nobody can take away from me.”

With her Ph.D. in hand, Chong says she may become a college professor since she would like to share her knowledge with others in the same way that university instructors have shared theirs with her.

More information about the Solar Oven Society can be found at http://www.solarovens.org/

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