Tsui-fung Wong Tsui-fung Wong (1924) served as Dean of Women and Professor of Sociology at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. At the end of WWII, she traveled to England and Scotland, as a guest of the British Aid to China Fund, in order to study rehabilitation programs and child welfare work. After returning to Lingnan University, Tsui-fung managed an increasing enrollment of students with very limited resources as the result of war and inflation. In addition to her university work, Tsui-fung organized a Child Welfare Leadership Training program, with assistance from the United Service to China, Inc.
Maria Lanzar Maria Lanzar (1923) was the first Barbour Scholar to earn a doctoral degree, along with Yi-fang Wu, in 1928. Mariagraduated with a doctorate in Political Science in 1928. As the first Barbour Scholar from Manila, Lanzar studied the methods by which American sovereignty was exercised in the Philippines. For her dissertation, The Anti-Imperialist League, Maria obtained material from libraries in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Washington, and also from personal files of American politicians and statesmen who had taken part in legislation regarding the Philippines. After receiving her Ph.D. she returned to Manila as a member of the faculty in political science and also served for several years as Dean of Women. Maria served as an active member of the Philippine Association of University Women and the Philippine Academy of Social Sciences.
Yi-fang Wu Yi-fang Wu (1922) became the first Barbour Scholar (along with Maria Lanzar) to earn a doctoral degree in 1928. Dr. Wu, born on January 26, 1893 in Hupei, China, as a child underwent the tortures of foot binding. Realizing that she could not pursue her dream of being a modern woman on four-inch feet, she imposed on herself ten or fifteen years later the painful processes of unbinding and somewhat lengthening her deformed feet. She graduated in 1919 as a member of the first class of Ginling Women’s College in Nanking, China. That year, she began teaching and, in 1922, became head of the English Department at the Government Higher Normal School for Women in Peking. At this time, Mary Wooley, President of Mount Holyoke College, was touring China and was very impressed by Wu’s work. President Wooley, upon her return to the United States, recommended Wu for a Barbour Scholarship. Wu earned her master’s degree from the University of Michigan in 1924 and her doctoral degree in 1928. In 1928, she returned to China as a newly minted Ph.D. in Biology to assume the presidency of her undergraduate alma mater, Ginling Women’s College, becoming the first native Chinese woman to lead the school. The most fascinating part of Ginling College’s history, and the reason why today it is a household name in China, is because of the heroism of its faculty and staff during the Rape of Nanking, when the campus served as a refuge for hundreds of women fleeing the Japanese. During her twenty-three-year presidency, Dr. Wu led the college in peacetime as well as through the chaos of the Sino-Japanese and Chinese Civil Wars. Dr. Wu had a long and distinguished career in which she served on many religious, educational, and government councils in pre-Communist China and as a Chinese delegate to many international meetings including the National Congress of Women in Chicago and the founding conference for the United Nations in San Francisco. In April 1979, Dr. Wu traveled to Ann Arbor to receive the University of Michigan Alumnae Athena Award “in recognition of her professional distinction and dedication to the cause of education and the rights of women during turbulent times for her country.” Dr. Wu accepted this honor, “not just to me personally, but to my motherland, especially Chinese women.”
