SYA Summer China Program Director
Mary Ellen Friends returns after a short hiatus to her third summer as Program Director in Beijing. An Asian History teacher at Deerfield Academy since 1995, Mary Ellen has led multiple student trips to China, beginning in 2000. Mary Ellen earned her B.A. in East Asian Studies at Brown University and holds two advanced degrees in East Asian Languages and Literatures from Yale. She is the mother of two intrepid teenagers; she herself lived abroad as a young person (two years in Taiwan), and she loves working with adolescents in intellectually and culturally rich environments.