Scholars of the Year

2015 - 2016

This fall, the Confucius Institute awarded full scholarships to undergraduate students Jawaylin Brooks & Antonio Kiser to study abroad for a semester at Beijing Jiaotong University located in Beijing, China. While abroad, the two scholars will engage in Chinese academia including mandarin language and history courses.

Jawaylin Brooks, a junior psychology major from Atlanta, Georgia has been within the Confucius Institute program since 2014. Ranked number one in the pole vault in the Southwestern Athletic Conference for the last two years, Brooks has dedicated his personal time to studying the Chinese language and culture. Since his enrollment into the Confucius Institute, Jawaylin has completed a full year of Chinese language classes and participated in our study abroad trip summer 2015. When we asked Jawaylin what he plans to do with his international experience he answered “ My ultimate goal is to become completely fluent and knowledgeable of the Chinese language and culture and infuse it into my everyday life”.

Accompanying Jawaylin abroad, another Confucius Institute scholar Antonio Kiser has taken advantage of all opportunities the Confucius Institute has to offer. Being a native of Houston and attending Texas Southern University, Antonio has always felt the comfort of being home until he explored China with the Confucius Institute program in the summer of 2014. Seeking out every option to return to China, Antonio enrolled in Mandarin language classes in the fall of 2014. Through his tremendous efforts in the classroom and high Chinese proficiency test scores, his dreams ultimately became reality as he returned to China on full scholarship for the 2015 fall semester.

The Confucius Institute here at Texas Southern University commends Jawaylin Brooks and Antonio Kiser for their hard work and commitment within our program and most of all furthering their education abroad. Therefore, both students have been named the Confucius Institute scholars of the 2015-2016 school year.