38 THE QUEENS COURIER • KIDS & EDUCATION • DECEMBER 28, 2017 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
kids & education
Photos by Suzanne Monteverdi/QNS
TV personality and alumna Julie Chen visits St. Francis Prep
BY SUZANNE MONTEVERDI
smonteverdi@qns.com / @smont76
Th e halls of a Fresh Meadows high
school were abuzz as a famed alumna
stopped by to reminisce with faculty and
chat with the next generation of students
in December.
Journalist and television personality
Julie Chen visited her alma mater, St.
Francis Preparatory High School, on Dec.
19. Th e Queens native began the aft ernoon
by browsing through yearbooks
from 1983-1987: the formative years she
spent walking the school’s halls.
Th e daughter of Chinese immigrants,
Chen was raised in Bayside and graduated
from St. Francis Prep before moving on
to the University of Southern California,
where she majored in broadcast journalism.
Aft er an internship at CBS and working
as a desk assistant and later producer
at ABC, she traveled to Dayton, OH,
where she worked as a news anchor.
She returned to the New York market
in 1999, when she took a job as the anchor
of CBS’ “Morning News” and later as
co-host of “Th e Early Show.” Today, she
co-hosts “Th e Talk” and hosts reality TV
show, “Big Brother.”
Alongside childhood best friend and fellow
alumna Joann Petz, Chen embarked
on a tour of the school with school principal
Patrick McLaughlin and president
Brother Leonard Conway, stopping along
the way to share memories with faculty
and fellow grads who returned to the
school to teach. A stop at the school’s
“Hall of Fame,” where Chen was inducted
in 2012, and her regular cafeteria table
were among the destinations.
Th e fi nal stop was to one of the school’s
classrooms, where a group of curious students
were awaiting Chen’s arrival. Th e
alumna gave the teens a synopsis of her
professional career and later opened up
the fl oor for questions.
Chen told the group she knew she
wanted to be a news reporter at an early
age, remembering sharing her dream with
her classmates at JHS 194 in Whitestone.
“I knew I wanted to be a news reporter.
I knew I wanted to be in front of a camera,”
she said.
Aft er acknowledging this is not the
case for all students, Chen told students
who may be worried about choosing a
career path to explore anything related to
their passions or strengths at an early age
through internships or other hands-on
opportunities.
When asked what was the biggest hurdle
she had to overcome, Chen said it was
an experience with racism during her
time working in Ohio.
Aft er three months on the job as a general
assignment reporter, Chen learned
that the news director who hired her was
to be moved to a new position. When
she approached the new director about
getting time at the anchor desk, she was
denied and told that, because she was
Chinese, she was “unrelatable” to the local
audience.
Chen said she approached the situation
with positivity, working twice as hard and
putting together an impressive resume
tape. And things worked in her favor,
she remembered: it was soon thereaft er
she left for New York to take a job as an
anchor on CBS.
“You have to remember where you came
from,” Chen said. “Queens is where I
came from — and I’m proud of it.”