Shemenko "Amy" Hang (C'09) has a long list of Georgetown professors who have inspired her, she says, "because of their passion and life commitments to living out the Jesuit tradition of being a person for others."

Professor of government James Schall, S.J., is high on the list.

"Father Schall is passionate about teaching, and this passion of his is directly reflected in the attentive and captivated eyes of his students during class," Hang says. "He has such a presence in the classroom and rapport with his students. With 100 plus students, he learned all of our names in the first few weeks, and on the day of our final exam, he approached us individually and said something privately and personally to each one of us."

Schall calls Hang, who took his Elements of Political Theory class, "a very excellent and diligent student."

 "[The class] struck a cord with me because the same questions Aristotle, Locke and all the other great political philosophers had then are the same questions I contemplate today in the 21st century," Hang relates. "Their ideas and philosophies had a resonance with me."

But without a financial aid package, Hang would never have experienced that class and the many others she has taken in her three years at Georgetown.

The youngest of seven children born to Hmong refugees, Hang's family escaped to the United States and settled in Saint Paul, Minn. Her family, which is part of an ethnic group in Southeast Asia that became targets of the Viet Cong in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, left their native country for a better life.

The Hangs started a restaurant, and her mother supplemented their income by growing and selling vegetables and flowers at a local farmers’ market with profits earmarked for her children's education. 

But Hang still needed help. Her stellar high school record and her financial need led to her being chosen as a Georgetown Scholarship Program (GSP) recipient. This and other Georgetown financial assistance helped to bridge the cost of attendance for her to come to the Hilltop. Impressed with the Jesuit tradition and its financial aid package, she picked Georgetown over the University of Chicago and Brandeis University.  

GSP is an organization of patterned after Georgetown's Alumni Admissions Program (AAP), an organization of nearly 5,000 alumni volunteers in every state and more than 60 countries. While AAP assists the university in recruiting each first-year class by interviewing applicants, the GSP volunteers provide financial support for accepted students in need. Over three years, GSP has raised more than $8 million. Hang, supported by the class of 1980, realized the networking aspects of GSP, and founded a mentorship for students in the program.

"I saw the potential of the GSP to be more than just a scholarship for incoming students," she says, "and I recognized the value of each other benefiting from our combined experiences, considering most of us came from limited resources."

On campus, Hang has been an advocate for Asian Americans, and she keeps in touch with the Hmong community in her home town. After she graduates from Georgetown, she plans to pursue a master's degree in policy and a law degree. She says she will "most likely work on electoral or campaign organizing specific to the Hmong or Southeast Asian community" in Minnesota. She is also eager to address the significant disparities in academic achievement in the Southeast Asian community as compared to East Asian Americans, South Asian Americans and other Americans.

Hang, who is minoring in justice and peace studies, is studying the politics of the Maori this semester in Auckland, New Zealand. The Maori are the indigenous Polynesian people of the country.

This spring, she was one of two Georgetown students selected for a prestigious Harry S. Truman Scholarship. The scholarship provides up to $30,000 in funding to college juniors who want to pursue graduate degrees in public service fields.

She is grateful for all the financial aid she received from Georgetown and elsewhere.

"In a modern society and globalizing job market, being university educated and having a university diploma are increasingly necessary and full of benefits," Hang says. "Financial aid for accepted students is important because it allows accepted students, who otherwise would not have been able to attend, to enroll in the university. The weight of his or her parents’ wallet should not be the deciding factor."

Source: Office of Communications