The Chinese government has awarded 10 California State University, Northridge students and alumni full scholarships to study at some of China’s top universities this fall.

Six of these recipients are CSUN students who had earned China Scholarship Council (CSC) awards last year and had them renewed.

Su noted that among the recipients to have their scholarships renewed is CSUN music graduate student, Spencer Goad, who spent the 2013-2014 academic year studying at Shanghai Conservatory of Music, one of the two top conservatories in China.

“Doing well in his studies he has proven to be an influential student with invitations to teach and perform at the conservatory and to help create a social media network for future CSUN CSC scholarship recipients in China,” Justine Su said, the director of CSUN’s China institute. “Spencer is also developing plans with CSUN music faculty Diane Rosetti and Ric Alviso to provide guest lectures to their classes on music entrepreneurship and world music in the coming academic year.”

Vice President for Student Affairs William Watkins with Deputy Consul General Lei Wang at the CSC scholarship celebration luncheon on Aug. 5.

The new recipients are from CSUN’s College of Humanities, Michael D. Eisner College of Education and David Nazarian College of Business and Economics: Jacob Abramson will study Chinese language and marketing at Fudan University, while Armond Hardwick-Jones will study humanities at Tsinghua University. Both Carlos Barrera and Becky Tsan will attend China’s leading finance and business college, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, majoring in finance and marketing as well as educational leadership and policy studies.

Joining Goad in successfully renewing his scholarship are Eliza Corpus, who will continue to study music at Shanghai Normal University; Brandon Michael Violette will continue to studying cinema and television arts at the Beijing Film Academy; Robert Megill will continue his graduate program on Chinese philosophy at Fudan University in Shanghai; and Andre Javidi and Danielle Cabello are continuing their master’s degree programs in Beijing, China.

Cabello is studying applied linguistics at Tsinghua University-known as China’s MIT-where she has been invited to teach critical thinking and creative writing. Javidi is attending People’s University in Beijing. It is one of China’s top universities for studies in research in political science and commonly referred to as China’s “Yale.”

The CSC scholarship award program in China holds the same prestige and status as the Fulbright award program in the United States. For the past 15 years, CSUN students have been awarded the largest number of CSC awards among all American students in universities in the western service region universities. This brings the total of CSC awards for CSUN students since 1990 to 51, more than one third of the total number of awards -142 granted by CSC to American students in universities in Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, Hawaii, and the American Pacific Islands.

California State University, Northridge established the China Institute in 1982. The institute aims to promote better understanding of the Chinese culture and to strengthen friendship between the American and Chinese peoples. During the past 30 years, it has played host to hundreds of Chinese scholars and has been influential in arranging dozens of education and cultural exchange programs between both countries. In addition to the awards from the Chinese Government Scholarship Council, the institute also works with sister campuses in China arranging to help other students attend universities in that country, such as the full scholarship summer program on Chinese opera, culture and language for CSUN students at Shanghai Theatre Academy. For more information about the institute, visit http://www.csun.edu/china_institute/ or email Dr. Zhixin Su at zsu@csun.edu.

China Institute, Students