Emily Vo
Computer Science and Asian American Studies
Margate, Fla.
What is your main extracurricular activity and why is it important to you?
My main extracurricular activity included being a part of Asian Pacific Americans for Action (APAA). The organization had been dormant for some time due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has contributed to many past Cornell student’s educational and political journeys.
My role in APAA began first as a member interested in restarting Parallax, the organization’s political magazine, then as president and later as senior advisor. My involvement with APAA defined how I would come to understand how my relationship to my peers was underlined by our commitment to imagine a better world. Though we were a small group at first, I am most grateful for the bonds and relationships that it cultivated and the experiences it gave me organizing on-campus.
I am particularly appreciative of the teach-in we put together on the history of Asian American activism and its role in establishing Asian American studies. These teach-ins allowed us to develop a political language and understanding that connected our histories to Palestinian liberation and organizing against imperialism abroad. To do this with a community of friends was incredibly important and I am grateful for the kind people that I had the privilege of meeting along the way.
What Cornell memory do you treasure the most?
This is particularly difficult because there are (thankfully) so many, but I think being at Cornell would not have been as impactful if not for Ithaca and the local community, events, bookshops, markets, and music that make Ithaca what it is.
I will go with two moments: hearing poet Mosab Abu Toha at Buffalo Street Books and spending a late Sunday morning at the Farmers' Market and sitting on the dock in 50 degree weather with friends. (Special shoutout to the Khmer Angkor food stall. Thank you for feeding me almost every Sunday in the Fall of my sophomore year.)
What are the most valuable skills you gained from your Arts & Sciences education?
My degree in computer science taught me the technical skills necessary to understand the field and pursue my own projects, but the most valuable skills I gained from this interdisciplinary education include critical thinking and empathy.
It is easy to brush over these skills, but I think without these foundations, even fields such as computer science can be uncreative and, at worst, harmful. My courses in computer and information science gave me the reasoning and logic needed for understanding topics such as machine learning or data science, while my courses in history and Asian American studies allowed me to analyze the implications of technologies on the material conditions that shape our environment such as housing, food access, labor and social resources. The critical thinking skills that I gained through Arts & Sciences are as fundamental to computer science as programming.
What have you accomplished as a Cornell student that you are most proud of?
I am most proud of curating an exhibit in the Olin Library based on my research with the Asian American Studies Oral History Project.
During the summer of my sophomore year, I participated in the Nexus Scholars program where I worked with Professor Derek Chang and Professor Christine Balance on this oral history project. The exhibit was based on interviews surrounding the creation of Asian American studies at Cornell, as well as campus politics surrounding each major decade from the 1970s to mid 2010s.
The process in designing the physical layout and deciding how to best visually represent the events was a major challenge and one that taught me through trial and error. I had to consider how to engage an audience with a structured timeline or what to leave out in the main arch of the story or theme of the exhibit.
It was an extremely rewarding experience; though stressful and frustrating at times, it revealed to me the origins of Asian American studies at Cornell, including the stories and histories of past student activists who questioned their education. While experimenting with ways to engage their own political struggles, students addressed their needs on and beyond campus. However separate all the issues may have seemed, these events connect back to the politicized student life.
Every year, our faculty nominate graduating Arts & Sciences students to be featured as part of our Extraordinary Journeys series. Read more about the Class of 2026.
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