CSU Stanislaus Social Work Professor Mayling Chu Receives Prestigious Award


Dr. Mayling Chu, a member of the graduate Social Work faculty at California State University, Stanislaus, has been named a recipient of the prestigious California State University Wang Faculty Fellowship.

The $10,000 grant will support her research on the impact of China’s economic growth on its youth culture. Dr. Chu’s three-to-five-month project will begin later this year at Jiao Tung University in Shanghai. Dr. Chu is the first CSU Stanislaus faculty member to be selected by the California State University selection committee for the award. The scholarship program was established by former CSU Trustee Stanley T. Wang to provide faculty and students with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research in China.

“I’m very honored and excited about this award and appreciate the support this fellowship will provide,” Dr. Chu said. “I am eager to get to work on this research to compile information about the youth of China, which has experienced rapid social change.”

Dr. Marvalene Hughes, President of CSU Stanislaus, noted that Dr. Chu's selection as the recipient of the Wang Family Faculty Award was a superb honor for Dr. Chu and for the University.

“I know that Dr. Chu will enjoy the challenge that her chosen project offers," Dr. Hughes said. "Her academic prowess will certainly enhance her research, and her work will be an important contribution to the body of knowledge on Chinese culture and society."

“Dr. Chu is working on innovative areas of research related to China's unprecedented and substantial economic growth and change,” said Dr. Mary Cullinan, Dean of the College of Arts, Letters and Sciences. “As a Wang Faculty Fellow, she will be an impressive representative of the California State University system and will be able to work intensively on significant research.”

Having made a number of visits to China between 1988 and 1997 and again in 2002 to explore the country and the homeland of her parents, Chu said the fellowship will enable her to focus on how and why a generation gap surfaced between youth and the older population as China developed as an industrial giant.

“I think there is a lot of interest in that story because the youth in China today are growing up in a different time than their parents and they really don’t understand what their parents went through,” Chu said.

The fellowship winner said she will conduct research on youth lifestyles, concentrating on food, clothing, housing, transportation, education, entertainment and computer use. “In a country that not long ago saw virtually everyone on bicycles, more people are now driving cars and a national highway system is being built in China,” Dr. Chu said. “An economic transformation is taking place. The younger population wants a nice house, a car and clothes that are much different than what their parents wear.”

Before receiving her fellowship news, Dr. Chu had already scheduled a visit to China this summer for a one-month teaching seminar on youth culture in modern China at Southwest University of Nationalities in ChengDu. Chu has been an associate professor of social work at CSU Stanislaus since 1996. She teaches several courses that focus on how juvenile delinquency and the law relate to the social work field, and services for children and youths.

Dr. Chu can be reached at (209) 667-3453

Media Contact: Don Hansen (209) 667-3997