Tashi Zangmo

Tashi Zangmo FP '99 Wins Huntington Fellowship
College Street Journal, May 7, 1999

Tashi Zangmo FP '99 has won a $10,000 Samuel Huntington Fellowship to live and work in Bhutan next year, creating a program to encourage women and girls in her native village to pursue education and following in the footsteps of one of her heroes--Mary Lyon. In fact, Zangmo has been compared to MHC's founder by both her adviser, Professor of Politics Penny Gill, and by MHC Fellowship Coordinator Hilary Shaw, who says, "Tashi has a vision for educating young women." This year, more than seventy applications were received for the award and two fellowships were given. The last time a Mount Holyoke student won the Huntington Award was in 1989.

The Samuel Huntington Public Service Award was established in 1989 as a memorial to New England Electric System's former president and chief executive officer. The New England Electric System is a public utility holding company headquartered in Westborough, Massachusetts. Following graduation from college, Huntington taught science and mathematics to students in Nigeria. The Huntington award was created to enable students to realize similar experiences and to provide similar service; the fellowship provides an annual stipend for a graduating college senior who plans to pursue public service anywhere in the world. Selection is based on the quality of the student's proposal, academic record, and other achievements.

Zangmo will spend next year in Nangshing, the village in eastern Bhutan where she grew up. "I had this vision [to begin an education program for women] because I came from that village, I have walked through that path myself, and I know what the women in my village need," Zangmo says. "I hope I will be able to make a difference in their lives." After renting space, Zangmo will offer literacy classes for women and girls and will provide encouragement for parents to educate their daughters (despite the government of Bhutan's strong efforts to encourage equal education for both genders, the village still places greater emphasis on educating boys).

Zangmo came to Mount Holyoke in 1995. She had already earned a BA in Buddhist philosophy from the Central Institute of High Tibetan Studies in Varanasi, India. At MHC, she is a special major in development studies, a combination of politics, anthropology, and women's studies. Zangmo hopes to defer her admission to a graduate program in international education at the University of Massachusetts until September of 2000 and plans to return to Bhutan once her studies are completed.

"Tashi has made an extraordinary impression on me, as she has pursued her education with such energy and pluck," says Gill. "Her dream, to make the gifts of education more accessible to village women and girls, has fueled her irrepressible and insatiable desire for education for herself. She really does seem a contemporary Mary Lyon, with her spirit and determination and sheer shrewdness and idealism."

"I would like to thank Professor Claude Fennema and Visiting Instructor Deborah Strahman for leading my way to MHC and introducing me to this wonderful and unique college, which has made such a difference to my life," says Zangmo. "Secondly, I thank Mary Lyon, for calling me here, and third, I thank my adviser, who shaped my life at Mount Holyoke. She lit a candle for me all the way through."

-- Photograph by Fred LeBlanc