Dartmouth APAMSA – Asian Pacific American Medical Students Association Chapter at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth

APAMSA Lunar New Year Celebration

2021 is the year of the Ox and we were able to continue our tradition of celebrate the Lunar New Year (albeit a week early due to M1 scheduling conflicts) with dumplings and boba for our Geisel community! With a bit of flexibility in preparing dumpling and boba kits, consulting with student affairs, and moving over to Zoom, we were able to celebrate with over 80 individually packaged kits!

Thank you to all who participated, and we especially appreciate our resident master chef, Yoga, for her time and effort in preparing the kits and teaching us how to make the food. We would also like to extend a thank you to our DICE office for the support for this event. We hope to continue events like this in the future!

Screen capture of participants featuring their handmade dumplings

Dumplings and boba prepared by one of our participants, Tanya

Discussion with Dr. Diana Wu 12/04/2020

Thank you all who joined us on December 4, 2020 for a discussion with our wonderful Interim Dean of Diversity and Inclusion at Dartmouth, Dr. Diana Wu! She shared her thoughts on a range of topics within the space of Asian and Asian American identity, first describing the history of the term “Asian American” and the various political and cultural influences in the perception of this term, before identifying several challenges that we, as a society, are addressing in the current climate.

Click the link below to see the recording of the talk.

Screenshot from talk with Dr. Diana Wu 12-4-2020 — Screenshot from talk with Dr. Diana Wu

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1h-fcaWriWoYJoFE6bujMLV5Sn0hBtZAT?usp=sharing

300 dumplings, 6 pounds of boba, and infinite amounts of joy later…

Thank you so much to everyone who stopped by our Dumpling Social today! It was a wonderful way to celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month at Dartmouth. We were out of the dumpling filling and wraps within the first 30 minutes!! Harun made refreshing Thai iced tea, and Cindy made delicious milk tea that we could enjoy with boba. Xiangyu and Edel made the magic happen in kitchen by cooking all the dumplings that people wrapped themselves! Big shoutout to the Geisel Office for Diversity, Inclusion and Community Engagement for funding the event and Dartmouth Office of Pluralism and Leadership – OPAL for booking the venue. This was our last event of the school year, but we’re so excited for all the other events we will plan for next year!

Three different dumpling fillings were made from scratch! We had pork, chicken, and vegetarian options. All had diced cabbage. The vegetarian option was mixed with bok choi.

We also got Korean snack 새우깡 (Shrimp Crackers) and Chinese snack Hello Panda in case people got hungry while making dumplings. We also had Aloe drink!

People filled the room before the event even began officially!

We had three tables for each filling type: pork, chicken, and vegetarian.

Pictured from left to right are Xiangyu, Cindy, Harun, our Diversity, Inclusion & Community Engagement Director Shawn O’Leary , and Diana. Thanks so much for stopping by, Shawn!

Diana and Cindy hard at work in the kitchen to prepare the boba.

Boba was boiled for 15 minutes before being chilled in cold water. Then they were rolled in brown sugar.

Harun and Cindy serving the Thai iced tea! Boba first, ice next, and tea last…in that order for each cup. And of course, we didn’t forget the giant boba straws.

Our classmate Nathan Busam had the first sip of the bubble tea. He approved of its taste!

Edel boiling the dumplings that our classmates made.

This is the last table of the remaining students who helped us finish the cooked dumplings! All together, we consumed 300 dumplings THAT WE MADE!

“Meet Geisel Mentors” Dinner with the Nathan Smith Society – Our Inaugural Event!

On Tuesday, April 30th, we hosted our very first event at Brace Commons. The event was co-sponsored by the Nathan Smith Society, the pre-med organization at Dartmouth College. Around 50 students attended the “Meet Geisel Mentors” dinner where we paired medical students with undergraduates. We had delicious Thai food and had a wonderful time connecting mentors with mentees! We were fortunate to have our faculty advisor and anesthesiologist Dr. Vinca Chow speak about her involvement with APAMSA when she was a medical student and help stress the importance of mentorship. Much thanks to Dr. Witters, Kristal Wong, and Rachael Chacko and the Nathan Smith Society for helping us organize this. We are still in the process of pairing medical students with undergraduates who may be interested in medicine, so give us a shout if you would like to get involved!