Scholarship students bound for Asia

Friday, 16 June 2006

Eight students from the University of Adelaide will be honoured next week at a city reception attended by Premier Mike Rann.

The students are all recipients of the Endeavour Australia Cheung Kong Awards, a prestigious scholarship scheme offering tertiary students the opportunity to broaden their academic and cultural horizons in Asia. In total, 91 Australian students have been awarded Endeavour Australia Scholarships for 2006.

The University of Adelaide scholarship winners and their Asian host institutions are:

• Leon Marro (undergraduate): Tsinghua University, Beijing


• Sage Othams (undergraduate): Tsinghua University, Beijing


• Georgina Burns (undergraduate): University of Hong Kong


• Wei-Yen Huang (undergraduate): Shandong University, China


• Christopher Clarke (postgraduate): National Geophysical Research Institute, India


• Scott Boden (postgraduate): Kyoto University, Japan


• Adriel Cheng (postgraduate): Tsinghua University, Beijing


• Jayne Maseli (postgraduate): University of Tokyo, Japan

All will receive personalised plaques at an afternoon tea reception on Monday 19 June, 2.30pm, at Old Parliament House in North Terrace.

Bachelor of Arts and International Studies student, Leon Marro, will speak on behalf of the Adelaide scholarship recipients at Monday's ceremony.

Leon, who is studying French, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese at the University of Adelaide, will fly out to Beijing this September to spend 12 months at Tsinghua University. He hopes to work in Asia as a teacher, diplomat or translator after finishing his degree.

Georgina Burns, currently enrolled in her second year of a Bachelor of Commerce (Chinese) at the University of Adelaide, will spend one semester at the University of Hong Kong from this September.

"My goal is to get enough experience in both speaking Mandarin and living in a big city, so I can return to China in 2008 for the Beijing Olympics and hopefully work as a translator," Georgina said.

Sage Othams is studying for her Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of International Studies and Diploma of Languages (Chinese) at the University of Adelaide. She will spend the first six months of 2007 at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

"I'm hoping to get into the diplomatic field and work in China. I'm really looking forward to improving my Chinese, experiencing the culture and developing a more open-minded attitude towards life."

Wei-Yen Huang is finalising her Bachelor of International Studies degree and will spend six months at Shandong University in China next year.

Postgraduate scholarship students Scott Boden (Biology) and Jayne Maseli (Chemistry) will both study in Japan at Kyoto University and University of Tokyo, respectively.

Computer science postgraduate student Adriel Cheng will attend the Institute of Microelectronics at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and geophysical sciences postgraduate Christopher Clarke flies to India in July to spend four months at the National Geophysical Research Institute in India.

The Endeavour Australia Cheung Kong Scholarship Program is the first of its kind in Australia, and is jointly funded by the Cheung Kong Group and the Federal Government. After an initial three-year agreement, the program was this year extended for another two years. The total amount of scholarships involved will be AUD$7.5 million over five years.

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