Student Success Spotlight
The College and Career Readiness Center Program at Eastern Wyoming College would like to share Hongxia Boulden’s great success story. Hongxia was one of our best former ESL students. She first enrolled in the AE Program at Eastern Wyoming College in September 2011; she started at the high beginning level and exited the program in June 2013 as an Advanced ESL student. While taking ESL classes, Hongxia enrolled at Eastern Wyoming College as a full-time student.
When she decided to pursue post-secondary education, she was a little bit worried that her English language abilities would prevent her from being placed into mainstream college-level classes. So she spent many hours with her ESL instructor, Gabriela Banville, also preparing for the COMPASS test as well as improving her English language communication abilities. She took her COMPASS test and earned a near-perfect score in writing. She finished her first year here at EWC with a very high GPA.
After moving to Cheyenne in June 2013, she continued her college studies at the Laramie County Community College.
In 2013, while being an ESL student in the College and Career Readiness Center Program here at Eastern Wyoming College, she was inducted in the National Adult Education Honor Society and received the Mountain Plains Adult Education Association Outstanding Student Award.
Hongxia is a very hard-working person, and she has gone where very few ESL students have dared to go; after successfully completing the very rigorous process which involves the ASVAB exam as well as meeting the Guard’s physical and medical requirements, she joined the National Guard in March 2013 first activating in the Army and later, in 2014, moving to the Air Force military branch. It is to be mentioned that she spent a lot of hours with her ESL teacher here at the College and Career Readiness Center Program at EWC preparing for the language part of the ASVAB exam and never gave up regardless of how much frustrated she sometimes was during the studying process.
Hongxia, now an American citizen, is currently pursuing her International Studies degree at the University of Wyoming while working in the Air Force. Her journey has been challenging but her extraordinary abilities, hard work, ambition, and motivation have created a strong, perseverant, and very successful student and person.
During her college years so far Hongxia applied and received different scholarships such as Charlie Moore, Fontaine Yeoman Memorial, and Laramie County DUI Victim Impact Panel Scholarship. She also just applied for three internships at CIA, Chinese Embassy, and CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) in Washington, D.C.
On December 11, 2015, Hongxia gave us a very good piece of news: she was selected for an internship at the U.S. Embassy in Chengdu, China for the summer of 2016 as a part of the 2016 Department of State Internship Program.
All the staff members of the College and Career Readiness Center at Eastern Wyoming College are very proud of our former student and happy to share Hongxia’s success story with everybody at the local, state, and national levels. Congratulations to her and much good luck with everything she has planned for her future!