Congratulations to our April Student of the Month: Charis Liu!
Charis Liu will graduate next month with a Bachelor of Arts in International Politics and a minor in Comparative Literature. She is currently the secretary of Pi Sigma Alpha, the Political Science honor society, and a member of the Judicial Board for the University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA). As a member of the leadership team for Pi Sigma Alpha, Charis has organized events and shared her extensive career development experiences with her fellow undergraduates. These experiences include an internship with the National Bureau of Asian Research in Technology and Geoeconomics Affairs conducting research on digital trade, digital governance, intellectual property, and other economic issues relevant to Indo-Pacific foreign policy. She served as a human rights intern for ACAT: Acción de los Cristianos para la Abolición de la Tortura in Barcelona, Spain. In this role she drafted a report on the status of human rights in Nicaragua, researched the Catalonian legal system and engaged in extensive advocacy to advance the organization’s mission to abolish torture. Prior to this, she completed internships with the Advocacy and Management Group and the World Financial Group that gave her opportunities to refine her communication skills, research public policy issues, and learn about client services and marketing strategies.
Charis regularly teaches English and provides cultural integration support to people from a variety of backgrounds through the Mid State Literacy Council. She enjoys the connections she creates through this work both with and between people as they come to share elements of their lives with one another despite their different languages. Her commitment to community building through teaching and learning is also evident in her development of Opus 24, a network of music students who provide free lessons and resources for music education. She currently brings this passion to the Print Factory in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, where she works on community relations and grant writing.
Charis’s academic achievement has been recognized and supported by the Donald and Diane DiFrancesco Scholarship in Political Science, the Richard Hayes Scholarship in Political Science, and a College of the Liberal Arts scholarship. She was selected for the prestigious Perrault Fellows Program, a two year intercultural experience that prepares students for global leadership. The program provided full financial support for Charis’s travel and living expenses to complete her internship with ACAT in Barcelona, Spain.
