Zhang, Yi Awarded Sara’s Wish Scholarship

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Maggie Zhang ’21 and Sarah Yi ’22 are this year’s recipients of the StudentUniverse and Sara’s Wish Foundation Travel Award.

Sara's Wish Foundation was established in 1998 to honor the memory of Sara Christie Schewe, with the mission to sustain Sara’s loving spirit by promoting travel safety standards and practices around the globe and by providing financial support to young women working in the areas of education, health care and/or public service in the global community. 

The president of Sara's Wish Foundation is Sara’s mother, Anne Schewe, and Sara’s father, Charles Schewe, is professor emeritus of marketing at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst. The scholarship is co-presented by the foundation, as well as StudentUniverse, one of the world's leading travel booking sites for students and young adults. 

Both Zhang and Yi are first-generation students studying in South Korea in Spring 2021. Zhang is studying public health on a pre-dental track; Yi is studying economics with a minor in information technology. 

Zhang says she hopes the scholarship, and the study-abroad experience, will help her to continue a tradition of volunteering that began for her in high school. “I chose public health as my major because I was amazed by the impact public health professionals have on peoples’ lives,” she says. “I want to go on mission trips to low-income countries and provide dental care because I believe everyone should have access to dental and medical care.”

Yi is hopeful that her experience will provide her an immersive look into the South Korean economy. “The Korean economy has shown a rapid and continuous growth in the past couple of decades in addition to becoming world leaders in many industries,” she says. “I hope to gain a better understanding of how the Korean corporate system operates, how it differs from the United States, and how the strengths and weaknesses of both can be combined together in harmony to take on the economy on a global scale.”  

More info on the scholarship is available on the Sara’s Wish Foundation website.

Find about all the scholarships the International Programs Office offers on their website.