Spring 2024 ASCL Award Winners

The Department of Asian Languages, Cultures & Societies (ASCL) held two events to award prizes in recognition of our outstanding students this spring. On April 30th, the ASCL awards banquet included the awarding of the Pray Modern Language Prizes in Chinese and Japanese, prizes for outstanding students on study abroad programs, and prizes for outstanding students in Korean Studies and South Asian Studies this year. Several of these prizes were newly created this year by a vote of the ASCL faculty, including a new prize for the outstanding student in South Asian Studies named in honor of Professor Douglas E. Haynes, who is retiring at the end of this academic year. In addition, the faculty voted to name a prize for the outstanding student on the Chinese LSA+ Study Abroad Program after professor emeritus Hua-Yuan Li Mowry, who dedicated so many years of her life to the development of our study abroad and faculty exchange program with Beijing Normal University.

The second event was the annual ASCL reception for graduating seniors and their families on the day before graduation, June 8th. At this reception we announced the Wing-Tsit Chan Prize for the outstanding honors thesis this year, named after one of the early faculty founders of the Asian Studies program at Dartmouth. It was difficult to choose the recipient of this prize since there were four honors theses completed in ASCL this year. A full list of this year's prize winners is below.

Pray Modern Language Prize in Chinese –
Kavya Nivarthy '25
for the best scholar in Chinese language courses at Dartmouth this year

Pray Modern Language Prize in Japanese –
Alexander S. Munson '24
for the best scholar in Japanese language courses at Dartmouth this year    

Hua-Yuan Li Mowry Chinese LSA+ Study Abroad Program Student Prize – Kavya Nivarthy '25
for the outstanding student in this year's Chinese LSA+ study abroad program

Japanese LSA+ Study Abroad Program Student Prize –
Zixuan Wang '26
for the outstanding student in this year's Japanese LSA+ study abroad program

Vietnam Study Abroad Program Student Prize –
Maya A. Nguyen '24
for the outstanding student in this year's Vietnam Fall+ study abroad program

ASCL Prize in Korean Studies –
Arturo F. Serrano Borrero '24
for the outstanding student in Korean Studies this year

Douglas E. Haynes Prize in South Asian Studies –
Sri Sathvik Rayala '24
for the outstanding student in South Asian Studies this year

Wing-Tsit Chan Prize –
Sri Sathvik Rayala '24
for the outstanding honors thesis this year in the department.

Wing-Tsit Chan Prize Description

In 1942 Dartmouth hired Professor Wing-Tsit Chan. Born in Kwangtung, China, Professor Chan graduated from Lingnan University (one of the 17 Christian universities founded at the beginning of the 20th century) in 1924 and received his Ph.D. in Philosophy and Chinese Culture from Harvard University in 1929. He went back to Lingnan University where he served as the Dean of the Faculty from 1929 to 1936 and then taught in Hawaii before coming to Dartmouth in 1942 where he stayed until 1966. Professor Chan was an extremely important scholar and was one of the most respected and popular faculty members at the College. His classes were always heavily enrolled, and he helped Dartmouth to develop an extremely strong program in Asian Studies that remains one of our distinguished programs today.