Jennifer Ma-Pham among First Students to Receive the Merage Institute Fellowship

UC Irvine senior Jennifer Ma-Pham has been named a fellow by the Merage Institute for the American Dream.

Ma-Pham was one of only 15 students nationwide to be named a fellow, which is available to college students who are immigrants to the United States. Fellows were chosen based on their academic record, commitment to hard work, and demonstrations of leadership, creativity, initiative and exemplary ethics.

Ma-Pham was chosen for her academic performance, her leadership in public service campaigns against sexual abuse, and her deep commitment to making an impact on this issue after graduation from UCI. As a fellow, Ma-Pham will receive $10,000 per year for two years that can be applied toward pursuing a graduate degree or advancing her professional career.

“We are extremely proud that Jennifer has been named an American Dream fellow,� said Manuel Gomez, vice chancellor of student affairs. “It recognizes not only her academic performance, but her extraordinary personal journey and clear commitment to public service. We also want to express our gratitude to Mr. Merage, whose vision and generosity made possible this new national fellowship.�

“I am delighted Jennifer is among the Institute’s inaugural class of fellows,� said Paul Merage, founder of the Institute. “These students are outstanding by any comparison, but as immigrants, their success is a living testimony to the ideals that founded this country.�

Born in Hong Kong to Chinese-Vietnamese parents in 1983, Ma-Pham emigrated with her mother to the United States when she was just 6 months old. Later they were joined by Ma-Pham’s father and other family members from overseas, and everyone shared a small apartment in Westminster. As a teenager, Ma-Pham and her family moved to Fountain Valley, where she attended high school and excelled as a student. It wasn’t until Ma-Pham and her parents moved to their own apartment, however, that Ma-Pham shared with her mother and father a secret that had haunted her.

According to Ma-Pham, for almost five years while living with her extended family, she had been a victim of sexual abuse. She had not fully faced what this meant until she became a student at UCI.

“As a freshman, I took a class on marriage and families taught by sociology Professor Francesca Cancian,� she said. “One presentation was about sexual abuse. A speaker addressed the audience, saying if anyone was a victim of abuse, it wasn’t their fault and recommended counseling on campus.� These words overwhelmed Ma-Pham and soon afterwards, she visited the UCI Center for Women and Men. Since then, along with maintaining a 3.76 grade point average at UCI, the social ecology major has held leadership roles in the Campus Assault Resource Program, the Alliance for Sexual Assault Survivors, the UCI Center for Women and Men, and Girls Incorporated.

Ma-Pham will graduate in June and plans to pursue a master’s degree in social work at Columbia University. She hopes one day to found a nonprofit organization for the prevention of child sexual abuse.

The Merage Institute Fellows Program is dedicated to promoting expanded education and career opportunities for immigrants. Founded by Paul and Lilly Merage, both immigrants to the United States, the institute will annually choose a number of promising immigrant students in their graduating year of college to participate in the Merage Institute Fellows Program. The selected students are chosen for reflecting both a strong desire and a real capacity to achieve leadership roles in business, science, education, public service, culture and the arts. All fellows are asked to subsequently become mentors to future fellows.

Along with Ma-Pham, other fellows named this year include students from Harvard University, Princeton University, Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


ut the University of California, Irvine: The University of California, Irvine is a top-ranked public university dedicated to research, scholarship and community. Founded in 1965, UCI is among the fastest-growing University of California campuses, with approximately 24,000 undergraduate and graduate students and about 1,300 faculty members. The third-largest employer in dynamic Orange County, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3 billion


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