SF State Recognizes 12 Outstanding Graduates During Virtual Commencement

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.

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.