Congratulations to El Camino College alumna, Presidential Scholar, and former forensics team member Leia Yen, who recently won the prestigious Marshall Scholarship after an extremely intensive application process. After El Camino, Yen transferred to UCLA and graduated summa cum laude and with multiple academic honors this past spring. Leia will continue her studies in digital humanities for two years at King's College London as part of the Marshall Scholarship. Since leaving El Camino, Leia has continued to volunteer as a forensic team coach and as the final scholarship interview approached, coaches and current team members helped her prepare and practice. She credits El Camino College with giving her the skills and perspectives she needed to stand out to the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission.

Named for former Secretary of State George Marshall, author of the Marshall Plan after World War II, the Marshall Scholarship is considered, along with the Fulbright Program scholarship, to be the world's most competitive international graduate student scholarship. Past recipients include two current U.S. Supreme Court justices, one Nobel Laureate and four Pulitzer Prize winners, and the deans of Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard College. Yen will begin at King's College in fall 2020.