Eliza Nguyen:
Elisa Nguyen is a full-time Running Start student running for ASG Vice President. She has a passion for working with others and understanding their perspective and point of view. She is a very determined, driven person, reaching goals even when life pulls her down.
Nguyen has excellent communication and time management skills. She successfully balances school, her 8-hour-per-day job, and the many clubs she participates in. “I manage my time in a very efficient way,” says Nguyen. “If I have any free time during my day, I will spend it completing a task I have for next week.”
Two of the clubs she has been involved in are Key Club and the Women’s Empowerment Club. In high school, she helped organize Key Club, where members worked to sew blankets for charities. She loved the bonding experience Key Club brought. She loves the Women’s Empowerment Club because, as a female student, it is hard to always be vigilant of her surroundings. In the Women’s Empowerment Club, she notes that officers are always finding new ways for women to protect themselves and others.
If elected, Nguyen hopes to create a fun, loving, and remarkable year for all students. She will concentrate her time on activities and organizations to improve student life. She will ensure that events and activities will run as planned and promises to fulfill any duties delegated by the president. COVID-19 has made it difficult for students to meet peers and professors in person, and as the pandemic continues, it is difficult to know where Bellevue College will be next school year. However, she is open-minded and ready for the challenge, hoping to engage students and make them feel welcomed, regardless of distance.
“As becoming Vice President,” Nguyen says, “I will concentrate my time for activities and organizations to improve any problems or to enhance students to enjoy their year at Bellevue College, fulfilling them with exciting opportunities.”
Theint Thu:
Theint Thu, running for ASG President, has experience representing and overseeing the wellness of students and identifying any needs that students and the campus body might have. Since she was in high school, she has worked an abundance of volunteer positions as an event and PR representative, and as a research ambassador at Hero UW. She has learned through the path of this year’s vice president and president, and expresses that “getting to work with them showed [her] the kind of responsibilities and possibilities that came along with having the president platform to do the best that [she] can to stand up for BC student rights in making sure students are getting what they deserve.”
Growing up, Thu had always been an advocate for others, no matter who they were or what their background was. “As I grew older,” Thu details, “I learned that that was a personality trait that could move into student government work because it was really helpful in giving me confidence and courage, and to always speak up [about] my knowledge and values to people who had more presence and power than I did.” A quality that Thu gained while growing up was adaptability. During her years in elementary and middle school, she studied in Dubai, UAE, which she explains was a sudden turn of events due to her mom’s work. “I studied in a Burmese government school, which only teaches in Burmese. Out of nowhere, we had to move to Dubai to an international school with students from over 150 nationalities. I had to go there and I was not that great at speaking English. In fact, I had to take ESL for the whole time period I was there except for the last two years.” Although this was difficult, she had completed her ESL course by the eighth grade and even took two beginner language courses in French and Arabic. She had also begun making a lot of friends, allowing her to become more outspoken and confident. This institution had taught her the necessary skills to thrive in a diverse environment, including adaptability, which has become a core personality trait of hers. She has proven capable of applying her leadership, team collaboration and especially adaptive skills to work with a team full of different and diverse backgrounds. She hopes to make teams work smoothly and to advocate for others at ASG.
Thu is currently planning out wellness-related programs that could go long-term in the next school year. She was encouraged to come up with a resolution over the limited wellness-related resources that are offered on campus currently, prompting her to meet with Brad Huggins, head of the IE office. From what we know, these programs detail a plan to better accommodate students’ mental health, cultural wellbeing and especially academic success. If these plans go through, Thu emphasizes that it would be one of the first changes she’d be working on as ASG president.
Thu emphasizes that she wishes to use her platform to encourage a collaborative environment and to bring about a positive and meaningful college experience. She plans to promote programs encouraging students to involve themselves on campus in order to make ASG a collaborative and friendly environment for next year’s school year.
