ASG Honor Banquet The American Scholar Group held its annual Honor Banquet for staff, students and guests at Thiel College last weekend. Attendants were served chicken Mediterranean with a side of loaded mashed potatoes, sautéed garden vegetables and apple autumn salad. One of the major formal dining events of the year, the Honor Banquet is intended to affirm and promote the values that lie at the heart of the American education system: Honor, Integrity, & Excellence. Keynote speaker, LeAnn Bonzo, highlighted these major values in her speech as she reminded all ASG staff and students that in all manners of speech and behavior, they represented their friends, family, and their country. Various other speakers echoed similar themes on the night before all students recited the Honor pledge. Senior Gina Deng led her fellow students in reciting the Honor Pledge. Michaelene Harris also led ASG staff in reciting the student-first pledge. Staff and students make both pledges every year as a gesture of commitment to upholding these values. Dean of Global Engagement, Robert Stanger also gave a short presentation on ASG s history, recounting the company s humble beginnings and pointing to its bright future. The event ended with group photos on the Thiel College campus grounds. We hope you enjoy the following pictures from the event!
LeAnn Bonzo Director of American English Institute am new to American Scholar I Group and to most of you. I am thrilled to be employed by American Scholar Group. In some capacity or another, I have been intimately involved in the lives of internationals since I was 22 years old when I began volunteering for a host family program in Baltimore, MD. I ve traveled to four countries in Africa, spent a summer in the Middle East, have visited Amsterdam and Paris, lived in Indonesia for 17 years and have traveled to five other countries in Asia. I also have a degree in intercultural studies as well as in nursing and education. I am certified to teach high school English and Social Studies and middle school science. If there are two things I hope you can say about Mrs. Bonzo from this introduction, it is that she loves internationals and that she is a life-long learner. I am really looking forward to serving you all and to learning even more about the world through you! I have been asked to speak about American Values and Honor Code. Again, thank you for the opportunity. As I prepared this speech, I read over the American Scholar Honor Oath. The first words struck me. They are, I will represent American Scholar positively in all my daily endeavors. Reading this caused me to think about the word ambassador. Do you know what an ambassador is? An ambassador according to merriam-webster has two major understandings. First, an ambassador can be an official diplomat who represents his government in another country. For example, the American ambassador to China is Max Sieben Baucus. Second, an ambassador can be either an official or unofficial representative of another person, group or organization. Synonyms for ambassador include agent, delegate, envoy, and representative. Did you know that you are ambassadors? Did you know that while you are here in America, you will be representing your country and your family? People here in Greenville, in Struthers, and in your Keynote Speaker s Message schools will learn about your country from you. The way you conduct yourselves will reflect you, your families and your countries. I know that all of you want to bring them honor. While you are here in America, you have the privilege of being another kind of ambassador an ambassador for American Scholar Group. All of the employees and students in this room are ambassadors for American Scholar Group. David, Lisa, and Ben Ho who started ASG have come to embrace American values such as freedom, equality, free-enterprise, optimism, a strong work ethic, efficiency, directness, openness, honesty, truthfulness and integrity. Granted, these ideals are also values they brought with them from Singapore and that are shared in many countries around the world. Others who have worked with the Hos to see American Scholar Group get off the ground also embrace these same values. America is not perfect, but these values are highly esteemed here, and we strive for them. These values have allowed America to become the country that it now is. It has allowed America to become a country that embraces globalization and immigration. We are happy that you are here with us, and we look forward to serving you. Our desire is to help you to preserve all that is good and special and important to you from your homelands. Don t let that go. But our desire, too, is that you grow as individuals. Our hope is that you can embrace all that is good about America and reject the bad. We hope you will embrace American ideals that are expressed in the American Scholar Honor Oath. Those ideals include honesty, integrity, respect for the rights and dignity of all people, shunning corruption and exploitation, and taking responsibility for your own actions. The ability to embrace these ideals and to change is a process. And it involves making good choices. Every adult in this room can testify to the temptations they experienced in high school to cheat, to bully others, to rebel against authority, to take advantage of others, and to blame others for things we had done. Some of us, including me, look back on those days with some measure of shame because we were not always good ambassadors for ourselves, for our families, for our spoken values, and for our country. The adults in this room know, too, sometimes from hard life lessons, that when we turn away from values that are good and respectful of others that we can bear very sad and difficult consequences. The adults here at American Scholar Group want to see you spared the pain of making bad choices. Instead, we want to see you standing tall and strong and beautiful and with an honorable reputation and a clear conscience that you have completed your high school career as excellent ambassadors for yourselves, your families, your countries, and for American Scholar Group. Let us all work together to become ambassadors and an organization that strives for honesty and integrity, that respects the rights and dignity of all people, that opposes corruption and exploitation, and that takes responsibility for our actions. Go American Scholars! You CAN do it!.
Stanford House Captain: Tyler Chen Co-captain: James Tang PA House Captain: Carl Tang Co-captain: Alex Zhu Columbia House Captain: Amy Li Co-captain: Zoe Luo
Stonewall House Captain: Andy Ma Co-captain: Ander Wang Hamilton Hall Co-captains: Frank Ye and Helen Han Hamilton Hall Captains: Vincent Wen and Julie Yuer
10 Penn Avenue Greenville, Pennsylvania 16125 United States of America Website: www.americanscholargroup.com E-mail: info@american-scholar.org Phone: 724-885-1136 Fax: 724-638-5370