Su Chu Hsia Comes from China to Learn to Teach the Little Folks

Su Chu Hsia wanted to be a teacher and she wanted to come to America.

She came to America, alone, 5000 miles across the ocean, from her home in Nanchang, China; now she is enrolled as a student in the Iowa State Teachers College.

"I just love children," says Eugenia Hsia (her American name), "I could talk and play with children all the day long.  At home when I had sorrow or felt blue, I always went to the kindergarten to play with the little ones."

Always wanting to be with children, Miss Hsia (pronounced Shaw) determined to be a kindergarten teacher.  She worked toward this goal at the Laura Haygood Normal School in Senchan, China, and the Baldwin American Mission School in Nanchang, studying and practice teaching.

But Miss Hsia had higher ambitions in kindergarten education than China could satisfy, so, in September 1929, she left her home in Nanchang, capital of Kaingai province, China, to take a one year course in the Teachers College, in Indianapolis, capital of Indiana state, U. S. A.

One year of study was not enough and the young lady came to the Iowa State Teachers College to get advanced courses for a B. A. degree.  Now she is a junior studying government, Spanish I, principles in fundamentals, and physical training.

The news of her mother's death just last June was sent to Miss Hsia by her "American sister", Mrs. Hilda Howard Lawrence, of Chicago, a secretary in the International Y. W. C. A.  A married brother, sister, and small sister still live in China.  The father, who was a pastor in the American mission church, died before his daughter left China.  Here, Miss Hsia's home is with her American sister.  "It is with her and her husband that I spend my vacation.  There I am counted as a member of the family.  She is very kind and makes me feel at home in this big country."  The two became acquainted through a Filipino girl who cam over on the boat with Miss Hsia.

In giving her impressions of the Teachers College campus, Miss Haia stated that she thought it a friendly place and added,
"All the teachers are good and kind and sweet to me, and the girls, too, without question."

Through a government scholarship, Miss Hsia is granted five years to accomplish her aims.  Following graduation from this college, she plans to go to Teachers College, Columbia University, and then to return to her native land, from American where she came to learn to be a teacher.

Edited by University Archivist Gerald L. Peterson from an article in the College Eye, October 17, 1930, page 1.