Charles Vang ’10 Future Doctor

Charles Vang ’10 wants to become a family doctor in his hometown neighborhood in Minneapolis.

Hometown: Minneapolis

Birthplace: Santa Ana, California, in 1988, just a month after his Hmong parents emigrated from a Thai refugee camp

Family: Vang is the second oldest of six children

“I immensely enjoy both writing and medicine.”

Major: Chemistry; biology minor

Scholarships: Vang has attended Macalester with the help of a Gates Millennium Scholarship and a Catharine Lealtad Scholarship.

Extracurricular: Played intramural soccer and took part in the Asian Student Alliance, Korean Student Association, Students for a Free Tibet, and Ua Ke, the Hmong awareness organization he co-chaired for three years.

Future plans: He’ll attend medical school at the University of Minnesota beginning this fall; he plans to study family medicine. Hopes to someday work as a physician to members of the Twin Cities Hmong community.

Unexpected interest: Vang has taken several creative writing classes with Professor Wang Ping, and is currently working on a manuscript of Hmong stories from Laos, Thailand, and the United States. Says Wang, “These stories will make you cry and laugh, jump and sigh. He’ll someday be a doctor who writes bestsellers.”

Writing versus medicine: “It’s important to be familiar with ourselves and our strengths. Whatever we decide to focus on, we must always remember that it is more than that which defines us. I immensely enjoy both writing and medicine. To what extent I will carry out each is uncertain at this point, but I hope to continue sharing with others what I’ve learned.”

After Mac

Charles Vang is going to Medical School at the University of Minnesota