The Mary Jean Simpson Award is presented to the senior female student who best exemplifies the qualities of character, leadership and scholarship. One of the two recipients of this year’s award is Mallory McFarland (she/her pronouns).
A native of New York City, Mallory majored in Chinese in the College of Arts and Sciences and minored in writing.
Late in her high school career she decided to major in Chinese in college. “As I got older I realized I am part of two different cultures, and I felt like I wanted to explore that.” She was impressed at the depth and quality of the Chinese language program at UVM and became a passionate advocate for language as a vehicle for cross-cultural understanding.
Mallory immersed herself in cultural exploration, working as a teaching assistant in the Chinese department in 2020 for the course Chinese TV & Language Learning. With support from the U.S. Department of State Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship and a Benjamin A. Gilman Critical Need Language Award, she studied abroad in Qingdao, China at Shandong University of Science and Technology in summer 2019.
This spring Mallory was named as a member of the National Collegiate Chinese Honor Society, won the Student Supporting Students Award from the Mosaic Center for Students of Color, and received the Patrick M. Brown Leadership Award.
Mallory is the founder and leader of the Student Language Advisory Committee, established last spring to support foreign language study at UVM through outreach projects involving UVM faculty, staff and students.
Throughout her UVM career, Mallory has worked for several campus organizations. She served as a writing tutor at the Undergraduate Writing Center—this year she became the Writing Center’s Presentation Coordinator—and was employed at the Prism Center as administrative assistant, program and events assistant, and social media and marketing assistant respectively.
She also worked as a program assistant for the Abenaki Summer Happening Program, operated by the Center for Cultural Pluralism, and served as a member of the Academic Integrity Council through the Office of Student Conduct.
This summer Mallory will begin a full-time job with a performing arts public relations company based in New York City. She also plans to attend The New School in New York City for an MFA in Creative Writing. She has been accepted into dual tracks for Fiction and for Writing for Children and Young Adults.