Three undergraduate students from Cambodia are pursuing their educations at Syracuse University as scholarship recipients of SHE-CAN, a global organization that seeks to create opportunities for high-achieving young women from post-conflict and climate-challenged countries to succeed in positions of power and leadership. Sythong Run ’24, Sreynoch Van ’26 and Pisey Kim ’26 all went through a highly rigorous and selective process to become SHE-CAN (Supporting Her Education Changes A Nation) Scholars. They are striving to develop professional skills at Syracuse to take home to Cambodia, hoping to inspire young women and children to follow in their footsteps.

Sythong Run: A Tree’s Influence

When Sythong Run was interning for Marine Conservation Cambodia while in high school, she participated in a “Question of the Day” each Monday. The internship took place on Koh Ach Seh Island, so it was fitting that one question was, “If you could plant any tree on this island, what would it be?”

“Well, I’d have a tree that gives me many different fruits,” Run told the group, to which they replied, “No, that’s cheating.” With a desire to prove them wrong, Run took to an internet search and discovered the Tree of 40 Fruit, a living creation of sculpture professor Sam Van Aken that sits on the Syracuse University campus.

This spurred Run’s intrigue in studying at Syracuse. “Initially I wasn’t too interested,” she says. “I had heard of the school name, but then I saw it had the tree!” Run now returns to the Tree of 40 Fruit every season to take a photo.

At first, studying in the U.S. wasn’t on Run’s radar. “I thought there was no way I’d be able to pay my tuition,” she says. “I was all on my own.” Her high school science teacher had other thoughts, recommending SHE-CAN and telling her, “I think you have a chance.”

Run succeeded in earning a SHE-CAN scholarship, thanks in part to her passion for public health and anthropology. For a high school project, she visited local communities in Cambodia and talked to people about their medical practices, pertaining specifically to Dengue fever, a prevalent illness there.

Run aspires to do similar fieldwork in the future, drawing on her interdisciplinary studies. She’s majoring in public health in the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics and environment, sustainability and policy with a medical anthropology minor in the College of Arts and Sciences/Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. “One of my dreams is to immerse myself in the Indigenous Cambodian community and write about their medical practices,” she says. “But also capture their culture, because there hasn’t been much research done in those communities."

Read the full story via the Syracuse University website.

By Cameron McKeon