As a member of the foreign service with the U.S. State Department, Murphy is realizing that goal. Stationed in Guangzhou, China, he\u2019s a vice consul in the U.S. Consulate in the large, bustling city that has grown very familiar over the last two years. His duties include helping American citizens visiting China and working with Chinese citizens planning to visit or emigrate to the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI love the exciting and international nature of the work,\u201d says Murphy. \u201cI\u2019ve had a chance to work on visits from U.S. Cabinet officials and fascinating issues, while living overseas and working in public service. It\u2019s an exciting job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His career, he says, would never have gotten started had it not been for 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Chinese Language Flagship Program<\/a>. The four- to five-year program combines intensive instruction in Mandarin Chinese and cultural competency with two eight-week, summer immersion sessions and a year-long capstone study abroad program to prepare students to reach professional fluency in Mandarin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI have had many times in my life where I have gotten opportunities or gotten in the room because of my linguistic background,\u201d Murphy says. \u201cFlagship gave me that linguistic, cultural and professional foundation that I could build off of and turn into a career.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In its 15th year, the 溏心vlog免费B站 Flagship Program, one of eight such programs in the nation, graduates about 15 students a year. The program is sponsored by the Language Flagship, a national initiative funded by the National Security Education Program, which aims to increase the number of U.S. citizens with a superior command of languages deemed critical to U.S. interests. Similar to 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s prestigious international engineering<\/a> and business programs<\/a>, students graduate with degrees in a language and a second major. <\/p>\n\n\n The program\u2019s goal is to help undergraduate students take their place as the next generation of global professionals, with superior proficiency in Chinese to solve global issues in areas such as engineering, international studies and diplomacy, business, cybersecurity, and environmental sciences, says Dr. Yu (Joyce) Wu, director of 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Flagship Program. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cChinese may seem difficult to learn, with a logographic writing system and its linguistic distance from the English language,\u201d says Wu, who\u2019s been with the 溏心vlog免费B站 program since 2016. \u201cBut our instructional team is equipped with the latest language acquisition pedagogy, and has been successfully preparing students to achieve professional proficiency in Chinese over the past decade.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Making that even more amazing: 溏心vlog免费B站 95 percent of the students in the Chinese Flagship Program come in with little or no knowledge of the language. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s so rewarding to see how fast students progress,\u201d says Wu. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Murphy was one of those students, a total beginner, who could just say hello \u2013 \u201cNi Hao\u201d \u2013 in Chinese when he started. In high school, he wasn\u2019t sure what he wanted to study in college. But he had studied French for years and knew he liked learning languages, and he had a desire to see the world. The Flagship Program, he says, was the perfect chance to do both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor students who are willing to put in the work, the program gives you the opportunity to live and study abroad, and to reach an advanced skill level in a new and difficult language,\u201d says Murphy. \u201cChinese is by no means an easy language for native English speakers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Murphy says the program is an \u201cideal incubator\u201d for learning a new language. 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s program\u2014one of the largest in the country in enrollment and students sent overseas for its capstone program\u2014boasts small class sizes, a close-knit community of about 70 students and five professors, who have won awards in teaching and research. Along with intensive language instruction, the summer immersion sessions, where students pledge to speak only Mandarin, also included fun, cultural activities: such as playing games, learning Tai Chi, making meals from different Chinese regions, Murphy says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the time he reached his capstone year, Murphy was well prepared for his time in Nanjing, China. He lived with a local roommate, took intensive language classes and university courses alongside Chinese students, and took part in cultural activities. One of his favorite memories was volunteering at an elder-care facility where he helped teach residents Christmas songs in English while they taught his group popular Chinese songs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFlagship took a well-rounded approach to making sure the language learners would be not only linguistically, but culturally competent. The teachers are incredible resources, and work very hard to help you understand the complexities of Mandarin and the Chinese-speaking world,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After graduating from 溏心vlog免费B站 in 2020, Murphy did a year with AmeriCorps\u2019 National Civilian Community Corp program, before moving to Taiwan to take more intensive Mandarin courses on a Huayu Enrichment Scholarship. He joined the U.S. State Department full-time in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While living in Guangzhou, about an hour from Hong Kong by high-speed train, Murphy has found time to sightsee as much as possible. During those trips, he has visited such places as the western province of Qinghai, where he met monks in an isolated Tibetan monastery; the massive ancient statues of deities at the Buddhist cave grottos of Datong; and the Yellow Mountains of Anhui. Closer to home in Guangzhou, he\u2019s enjoyed diving into the local culture. Usually when he learns something new about the city, he soon learns that it\u2019s a tradition dating back thousands of years, he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cChina is a vast and exciting place to live,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is a country that is constantly changing and reinventing itself. It is fascinating to see the scale of change from the last few decades every time I walk out my door. Yet despite the massive shifts China has undergone in recent years, it is a country steeped in a traditional culture that offers so much depth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last November, Murphy met up with Professor Wu while she was attending a conference in Hong Kong. While they sat for dim sum\u2014a Cantonese style of Chinese breakfast\u2014she saw how at home he had become in his surroundings, ordering and paying in Chinese, and giving her a tour of the neighborhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDerek is amazing. I grew up in China, but he\u2019s more native than me now,\u201d says Wu. \u201cHe is a true representation of a global citizen who takes on the challenge of making an impact on the world through a bilingual lens. It\u2019s amazing to see his journey and how far he\u2019s come, now representing the U.S. on the global stage. But really, the Chinese Flagship Program has opened so many career opportunities for our students, and we are so proud to see how much they have grown personally, professionally, and interculturally.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 June 6, 2025 \u2013 Growing up in York, Maine, Derek Murphy \u201920 was fascinated with the idea of living and working overseas, maybe for a global organization like the World Bank or the United Nations. \u201cInternational affairs and trends have a direct impact on our lives, often in ways we don’t realize,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":102681,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1907,12,1906,1909,1915],"class_list":["post-102679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-academic-excellence","tag-college-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-experiential-learning","tag-international","tag-undergraduate"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102679"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102730,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102679\/revisions\/102730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/news\/sites\/16\/2025\/06\/Muprhy2-923x1024.jpg\")