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Johnny LaVecchia, a 2024 Coastal Carolina University graduate, was recently awarded a $7,000 Fulbright-Hays Fellowship for Advanced Overseas Chinese Language Study in Taiwan this summer. LaVecchia, who earned bachelor’s degrees in languages and intercultural studies and political science as well as a minor in Asian studies, is the first CCU student to receive this prestigious national scholarship. He is one of 15 students selected for the award this year.

LaVecchia has also been accepted into the Intensive Summer and Semester Language Program to study Mandarin in Taipei, Taiwan, this summer. This customized and rigorous program covers one academic year of language learning within eight weeks, which allows students to improve their proficiency on at least one American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages sub-level.

Xinyi Tan, Ph.D., an associate professor of Chinese and French at CCU and the director of the Intercultural Language Resource Center (ILRC), was LaVecchia’s academic advisor at CCU.

“Johnny was one of the most talented and active students in the Chinese program at CCU,” Tan said. “He worked as a Spanish and Mandarin tutor at the ILRC and played a leading role in the Chinese sketch comedies performed at the 2023 and 2024 Myrtle Beach community Chinese New Year celebrations. Before receiving the well-deserved Fulbright Hays, he was awarded a Moe Huayu Chinese Language Enrichment Scholarship and completed a semester of an intensive immersive program at Taiwan National Normal University in Fall 2023.”

Written by Garnet Williams, Spadoni College of Education and Social Sciences.