Teaching Assistants Jiahui Ouyang and Kohota Mori in the East Asian Studies Department office on the second floor of Breidenbaugh. (Photo William Oehler/The Gettysburgian)
By William Oehler, Director of Photography
For the academic year of 2025-26, Gettysburg College welcomed five new language Teaching Assistants (TAs) to its French, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, and German language classes and departments. Angelle Depuy, Jiahui Ouyang, Alba Chacon, Kotoha Mori, and Antonia Voss all participate in and outside classrooms. Teaching their own classes, liaisoning with culture clubs, hosting review sessions and working with their supervising professor to build-out class instruction-time, the TAs work directly with their students and department faculty.
The group of five are split between two academic buildings on campus; Ouyang and Mori, as a part of the East Asian Studies department, have their office in Breidenbaugh. While the three European language TAs, Depuy, Voss, and Chacon work on the fourth floor of McKnight. They were three recipients of the Fulbright scholarship program.
“I personally heard about it from a friend, and since I had wanted to live in the US for some time, I decided it was the right program and applied online,” explained Voss, describing her experience along with the other McKnight TAs while applying for the scholarship. “The whole process took so long, almost a year.” They all described the rigor in applying, stating “it’s a great scholarship, so it makes sense we needed to write so many essays.”
Fulbright pays for students’ accommodation, flights and location-specific needs. This year however, after experiencing uncertainty from the U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent actions, the Fulbright program board did not offer preferences related to institutional placement. While Voss, Depuy, and Chacon were not able to choose their placement, they have found a great community in Gettysburg.
“Americans give more compliments… one time a worker in Servo, he said he liked my tattoo and one day he just offered me a magnet with a sunflower on it,” said Depuy. They all remarked on a different time a “random stranger” complimented them.
While the McKnight TAs arrived at Gettysburg through the Fulbright scholarship, Ouyang and Mori partnered with their home universities in Japan and China. Ouyang attends Beijing Language and Culture University in Beijing, China. Her program requires a year’s worth of teaching abroad, and specifically partners with Gettysburg College for students to fulfill that requirement. For Mori, she has already spent a year teaching at Wesleyan College in Middletown Connecticut. She works with Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka Japan–a global study affiliated program at Gettysburg– in order to be placed in American Colleges and Universities.
During the lead up to their departure, both Ouyang and Mori experienced issues with their visas, Mori receiving her visa the week she flew to the United States. But that has not gotten in the way of enjoying the campus and the Gettysburg community. “I love the community here, the students are so nice!” Mori said.
She also remarked on how free she feels when planning for classes. Her supervising faculty members are Professor Eleanor Hogan and Professor Yoko Nishimura.
“When I have an opinion or idea, they just say go for it.” Mori also hosts homework help sessions and meets with a consistent group of students so they can ask more specific questions so she can work more closely to deepen their learning.
Ouyang works with 100 and 200 level students in and outside of class-time with the Chinese Culture Club and hosting fourth-hour activities. What she has found most impactful as a TA is her students. She recognises the difficulty of learning a new language especially one using a non-latin-based alphabet.
But working with her colleagues and even sharing an office with Mori has given her the support needed in starting a career in education. Ouyang “celebrated when [she] got [her] visa” understanding what it meant for her to have earned it. Ouyang explained that coming to Gettysburg was nervewracking, but she knew Professor Junjie Luo had attended her own University so she felt that connection already.
It was a common theme with all TAs that their Gettysburgian colleagues welcomed them into not only their lives at the college, but outside of the classroom as well. Voss described being invited by German Professor Henning Wrage to have dinner with his family.
“They invited me to dinner at their home in the first week without even knowing me and I really appreciated that… it felt so private… They share so much about their family life.”
When asked what each TA wanted in terms of an impact on campus and their time here, each one stated a similar refrain surrounding student immersion in their native languages. Chacon in the Spanish Department hopes to make “the learning environment as inviting as possible” and that even the students taking spanish just for Gettysburg’s language requirement walk away with a similar sentiment as Chacon: “…language has changed my life and I want at least one student to follow my path.”
Voss and Ouyang’s goals were similar, citing that they both grew up surrounded by their own culture.
Angelle Depuy, Alba Chacon and Antonia Voss outside McKnight. (Photo William Oehler/The Gettysburgian)Wi
“I want to share my own culture, because it is what shaped me as a person, so share it with everyone” Voss remarked. Ouyang looked more towards her home country as a whole: “I want everyone to know that China… it’s not as far away as people think, it is more similar to the States than people think.” She wants to create a closer relationship between China and the United States, “it’s a multidimensional country!”
Though the TAs are spread between two different buildings, they all make time to hang out together, cooking, celebrating and getting coffee in town. They work closely with their supervisors, and are already joining a bustling campus community with their clubs, rigorous course instruction and cultural programs. While only with our campus for a year, they are important members of the Gettysburg community, supporting each of their students to thrive in and out of the classroom. If you want to chat and learn more about their stories, Mori and Ouyang are in Breidenbaugh 212 within the East Asian Studies department, and Chacon, Depuy, and Voss are each on the fourth floor of Mcknight.
This article originally appeared on pages 12-13 of the October 2025 edition of The Gettysburgian’s magazine.
