Twelve outstanding graduates will be honored during San Francisco State University’s 120th Commencement ceremony, the second to be held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic, on Friday, May 21. They will represent their more than 8,400 peers in the Class of 2021.
As part of a longstanding tradition, each of the University’s six academic colleges selects an undergraduate and a graduate student to represent their classmates and wear their college’s academic hood during the ceremony. More details about the ceremony are available on the Commencement website.
Philip-Izac Evangelista Enguancho
As a graduate scholar in Communication Studies, Philip-Izac Evangelista Enguancho focused his culminating creative project on examining Filipino American and hip-hop culture through an autoethnographic performance. His work brought to the forefront voices, stories and bodies of a community that has been historically marginalized. In a world that has invested very little time in understanding Filipino history within the context of U.S. imperialism, Enguancho is committed to that work.
As a teacher, he excels in making abstract theoretical materials accessible and inviting to his audience, often using hip-hop lyrics and examples from popular culture. He led a group of his colleagues to challenge the department to actively pursue anti-racist policies and helped develop an anti-racist curriculum. He was instrumental in getting open educational resources so that materials for an introductory course will be zero-cost for students beginning in fall 2021.
Ying Wencie Hoang
Ying Wencie Hoang graduates with a Bachelor of Arts in Cinema and a minor in Race and Resistance Studies. Throughout her studies, she maintained a 4.0 grade-point average — the highest among all graduating Cinema students. She currently works as a publicity assistant on her College’s communications team, where she tells stories about the College’s faculty, students and alumni.
With ambitions of being a documentary filmmaker, Hoang is president of the Feminist Filmmaker Fellowship, an SF State club dedicated to supporting women and nonbinary filmmakers. She’s developed a variety of programming for the group, including resume-building workshops, movie nights and other themed socials.
Her student film “Our Stories: College from Home” captured the unique experiences of SF State students during the pandemic, telling stories of formerly incarcerated students, students facing homelessness and those dealing with loneliness. Hoang combined her concern for Asian American representation in film with the craft of filmmaking as a research assistant and post-production intern on SF State Asian American Studies Professor Valerie Soe’s film “Loveboat: Taiwan.” The documentary tells the story of a summer program for college-aged Taiwanese and Chinese students where romance often flourished.