Rochelle O'Neal Thorpe and Chinese Summer Study Program 2007 is looking for participants

Rochelle O'Neal Thorpe

Bryant University has been awarded an $89,000 federal grant to promote the study of the Chinese language in Rhode Island high schools.

The program will match 40 high school students and 10 teachers with visiting students from China, forming peer groups and engaging in collaborative activities related to the language and cultural learning. The two-week program will take place on the Bryant campus from July 16-28.The funding comes from a multi-year program titled "STARTALK," a project of the National Security Language Initiative – a multi-agency effort to expand foreign language education and will be administered by the U.S.-China Institute at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island.

Rochelle O’Neal Thorpe, a graduate of Emerson College with a Master of Arts in Integrated Marketing Communications has been selected as the Project Coordinator for the StarTalk Chinese Summer Program 2007. Rochelle, an African American woman, began studying Mandarin 27 years ago in 1980 and then was a 1981 exchange student to Taiwan Normal University’s Chinese Language Training Center in Taipei and Tung Hai University in Tai Chung, Taiwan that same year. By the summer of 1981 she was speaking fluently.

Rochelle was also the only African American exchange student from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst to participate in the 1981-1082 East Asian Studies Exchange Program as well. In 2002, Rochelle and her husband Richard F. Thorpe traveled to China’s most Northern Province of Hei Long Jiang (Black Dragon) to launch an English program for students and teachers living in the mountain city of Shuang Ya Shan (Double Duck Mountain). The couple made journals of their experience and completed a novel about Rochelle’! s Asia experience in the book “The Majestic Crane: An African American Girl’s Unique Journey to Asian Culture,” which was illustrated by Master Japanese Artist Kaji Aso.

Rochelle is excited to be part of a program that assits other young people with their study of Chinese language and culture.

For more information or applications for the Chinese Study program, send an email to dgalliva@bryant.edu or see the web site http://china.bryant.edu

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