In 1985, Ms. Lo-An Tabar-Gaul and Dr. Arunee Grow founded the first MCCCD Asian Student Association at Mesa Community College, which became the Asian/Pacific Islander Coalition (APIC). Dr. Grow is still the faculty advisor to APIC and Mr. Wendera Phung is the current club advisor. Dr. Grow was awarded "Advisor of the Year" by the MCC Student Association in 1994 and 1995.
APIC is a very active club and is recognized by the community for their involvements on and off campus.
In the early years, we had the reception luncheon for Asian Students and invited Lin Sue Clooney (at that time her last name was Shepard) as the guest speaker. She gave very good speech about coming here from Taiwan in the early age and what her mother taught her about Asian culture.
When we were a young club, we had to raise the money for trips such as to Disneyland (no ASMCC sponsor). We sold a lot of food. We made our own Vietnamese egg rolls (no restaurant to purchase and no kitchen regulations at that time), sold drinks at Football and Basketball games, sold Valentine’s cards in different languages and raised close to a thousand dollars for the trips. We had a lot of fun raising money and going on the trips.
