15. Dr. Yifang Wu, president of Ginling College. Dr. Wu is a member of the first class that graduated from the College, the Class of 1919. She was called to be the first Chinese president in the year 1928 after the resignation of Mrs. Lawrence Thurston who helped to found the college and was its president from 1915 to 1927.

Dr. Wu is unusually well fitted to be the president of the College and she brings to it many gifts and rare talents. She comes from a very fine type of Chinese home-the scholar-official type that ruled the country until the time of the Revolution. Her early education was given by private tutors in her own home. Then when women's education was first being given a place in the life of the nation she and her sister desired to have that kind of education which seemedly had done so much to awaken and improve the West. They therefore sought education in several different Mission schools, and finally Yi-fang came to Ginling where she joined the first class of the College. After graduation she taught English in the Higher Normal College for Women in Peiping, and after three years in this school she went to the University of Michigan where she earned her doctorate in the field of Biology. Reluctantly she accepted the presidency of her Alma Mater. During the brief years she has been here she has won the loyalty and cooperation of all her faculty - both Chinese and Western, and the deep admiration of the members of the student body and alumnae. She is the type of woman who can make the East understand the West and the West the East for she understands and appreciates the best in both. Christianity means more to her than words, but is a stimulus to the consecration of life itself to the needs of her own country. She has built her life into the life of the college in a remarkable way during the brief years of her presidency.