Showstopper: If the name Melody Ng ’26 rings a bell, perhaps you caught her in Saint Mary's recent production of Pippin. At Undergraduate Commencement, she’ll deliver the valedictory address. / Photo by Francis Tatem
Melody Ng ’26 Is Ready for Her Next Role: Valedictorian
A Theatre and Politics double major and proud first-generation immigrant, Ng hopes Commencement will be a “moment to celebrate each other, and all of who we are.”
If there’s one thing Valedictorian Melody Ng ’26 wants to make clear to her fellow Class of 2026 graduates, it’s that she is just like them. For one thing, she’s getting an assist from Celsius energy drinks to survive the semester’s final stretch. When we meet up at the Student Activities and Engagement Office in May, she is making do with her least favorite flavor, Peach Vibe. Like a lot of students, she’s coming down to the wire on some things.
“I didn’t get my graduation stoles until yesterday,” she admits. “And I still haven’t settled on what dress I’m going to wear yet.” Earning recognition as Valedictorian is prestigious, to be sure; it confers recognition that a student “embodies the essence of the graduating class through distinguished academic achievement, leadership, and meaningful involvement in the Saint Mary’s community.” But that’s not the whole picture, she emphasizes. “Procrastinators can do great things, too!”
Beneath the self-deprecation, Ng is a confident, driven student with a slew of accomplishments. A first-generation immigrant, she’s a recipient of the Theatre Department’s four-year, full-tuition scholarship. She is set to graduate with a double major in Theatre and Politics and a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies.
She served twice as class chair for Associated Students, Saint Mary’s student government organization. She provided peer mentoring to first-year students, helping them acclimate through the First Year Advising Cohort program. And during the year she served as a Social Justice Advocate at the Intercultural Center, she created and hosted community events on campus.
She has also directed, stage-managed, and performed in SMC theatre shows. If you caught this spring’s mainstage production of Pippin, you definitely saw her; she was the Leading Player, one of two starring roles in the musical. For the Asian and Pacific Islander Graduate Celebration on May 16, she was tapped as one of two keynote speakers.
And those attending Undergraduate Commencement will see Ng take the stage to deliver the valedictory address. For her, being Valedictorian is both an emotionally charged and gratifying experience.
“As an immigrant, opportunities can seem scarce sometimes,” she says. “I know that being here every day, sitting in my classrooms and learning, is a privilege not everyone gets to have. It’s something I definitely don’t take for granted.”
At Home on the Stage
Melody Yun Shuen Ng was born and raised in Penang, a densely populated state on Malaysia’s southwest coast. Her parents both worked at Intel’s office there, where they also met. Her extended family—grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins—all lived within driving distance. So did her maternal grandmother, who helped spark Ng’s passion for performing, she recalls. “She would sing karaoke with me, literally, from the time I was in the crib.”
In 2016, when Ng was 11, her father took a job at Intel’s headquarters in San José. Soon, she, her parents, and her younger brother were living in California. In some ways, the transition to the United States was manageable, she says. “I was raised trilingual, but I always gravitated to English over Mandarin and Malay.” In other ways, the shift to a new culture was more fraught. “People had trouble pronouncing my last name, and I was bullied in middle school because I had an accent. Malaysia is a former British colony, so I had different pronunciations and spelling. I was always putting a ‘u’ in things—‘colour,’ ‘neighbour.’”
While at Wilcox High School in Santa Clara, she fell in love with theatre. “It definitely became my thing,” she says. As she was acting in and directing plays, Ng also kept college in mind. She navigated that process largely on her own, taking rigorous AP courses, maintaining a high GPA, and studying relentlessly for the SAT.
“I always sought to be the least of my parents’ worries, because we just had so many other things to worry about, as a family in a brand new country,” she says. At the same time, she tried to balance that work ethic with her true passion. “I often had to remind myself to live and be who I wanted to be.”
When it came time, Ng applied to an eye-popping 38 schools. At first, Saint Mary’s was one among dozens. Then, in the spring of 2022, she learned that, in addition to being admitted to SMC, she had received a competitive full-tuition scholarship.
After touring the campus and sitting in on classes, she sensed that Saint Mary’s would be a natural next step. Her first semester confirmed that assessment. That fall, she nabbed the role of Azdak, one of the central characters in Saint Mary’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle. “I found a community immediately,” she says.
“I want to challenge our class to really stand up for what they believe in, as a community....We need to lean on each other, to understand each other and the world.”
Politics in Practice
For Ng, what drew her to Theatre is also what drew her to study Politics: an interest in collective endeavors larger than herself, and an empathy for lived experiences. What she has appreciated most about Saint Mary’s Politics program is how it helps students move beyond theory and data, keeping humanity at the center.
“One of my Politics professors, Patrizia Longo, makes sure that her students know the gravity, the weight, and the implications of things we’re talking about,” Ng says. “Because of her, every time I read about systemic issues, I remind myself, ‘These are parents, these are children. This is someone who means something to somebody.’”
She has had the chance to meet individuals behind the data, too. As part of Professor Ron Ahnen’s course on the Politics of Incarceration, Ng visited and spoke with inmates at the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. At the end of one conversation Ng had with a person incarcerated there, the inmate asked Ng if her perception of him had changed from the interaction. ‘No, because I knew you were more than a statistic,’” she recalls saying. “I try to enter every space without preconceived notions and be aware of my biases. That’s a skill our professors teach us.” After that, she remembers him relaxing, more at ease in the conversation.
Alongside her Politics education, Ng has put her ideals into action. She has made it a priority to serve young people in the community, volunteering with the Oakland nonprofit Girls Gain Confidence and the Santa Visits Alviso Foundation, an organization that provides youth programs, educational scholarships, and holiday activities for a community in San José.
She has also been a leader in some student efforts on campus, helping push for a more inclusive campus culture fostering productive dialogue between College leadership and students. “It was a really good learning experience for me, because we definitely tried to approach those conversations from a place of, ‘How can we help each other?’” she says. “It’s so important to enter a situation like that with intention and a desire to work together.”
One meaningful leadership experience for Ng was Gaels to Action, an event she helped host in 2025 with the support of Associated Students and the Intercultural Center. The goal was to create a space of support, where students of color could reflect on and share their experiences and challenges. Nearly 250 students took part, and the feedback from the event was very supportive.
“The event was formative to my experience of learning to care for the student body,” she says. “To use your voice in solidarity with your community, to speak with and for those who cannot, is the point of being a student leader.”
Celebrating “all of who we are”
As she looks toward Undergraduate Commencement on May 22, Ng is conscious that the ceremony falls amidst Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Reflecting on this season, she finds herself thinking about the community she has found at Saint Mary’s. “I live in a suite with three other Asian women, so for me, every month is AAPI month,” she quips. “But seriously, being able to see each other every day and have that shared heritage has been fantastic. It helps us all remember: There are people like us.”
She can’t help thinking, too, of those who paved the way for her. “I actually wear my grandma’s engagement ring around my neck, every day,” she says. “It’s a reminder to me that, without them, I wouldn’t be here.”
After graduation, Ng hopes to start performing in stage productions throughout the Bay Area. Her next show—she’s an understudy in Tiny Beautiful Things at the Town Hall Theatre in Lafayette, just up the road from Saint Mary’s—opens in just a few weeks. She also plans to get her paralegal certification and start applying to law schools—“eventually,” she emphasizes. For now, she’s looking forward to a much-needed gap year. “I have a whole stack of to-be-read books just waiting for me at home.”
When we chat, she’s readying herself for her valedictory address, in which she wants to speak to her class’s singular experiences in a larger societal context.
“I want to challenge our class to really stand up for what they believe in, as a community,” she says. “In this search for ambition or what society thinks is success, we can’t lose sight of what’s right or just let ChatGPT dictate what we do. We need to lean on each other, to understand each other and the world.”
Part of the power of a community—be it in a theatrical production, a college, or a democracy—is in embracing difference, Ng believes. “Being an immigrant has really allowed me to be conscientious of my intersecting identities while really seeing and celebrating other people for theirs. That’s what I hope Commencement will be: a moment to celebrate each other, and all of who we are.”
Hayden Royster is the Associate Editor in the Office of Marketing and Communications. Write him.
