Meet Lucy Zhou

Ying “Lucy” Zhou, Ph.D.
Founder & President
Hinsdale Multicultural Arts & Education Association (HMAE)

Building Bridges. Creating Belonging.

Connecting people through multicultural arts, education, community service, and meaningful community partnerships.

About Lucy

Dr. Lucy Zhou is the Founder and President of the Hinsdale Multicultural Arts & Education Association (HMAE). She also serves as Secretary of the Multicultural Spring Festival Committee, Village of Hinsdale, an unformal community committee established in 2023 with participation from the Village of Hinsdale, Hinsdale Public Library, Hinsdale Central High School, Hinsdale Covenant Church, and local residents.

From 2023 to 2025, Zhou served as an elected Trustee of the Hinsdale Public Library and as Secretary of the Library Board. Beginning in 2021, she also served a two-year term on the board of ACSE. During that time, she led youth education initiatives, helped develop a partnership between ACSE and MAHA to offer a series of programs on parenting and youth mental health, and organized the Youth Education section for the 2023 ACSE Annual Conference. She also served twice as a guest speaker.

Zhou has long been committed to multicultural education, community service, and the development of community-based AI initiatives that help connect people across cultures, generations, and communities.

Since 2023, Zhou has initiated and continued to develop Mid-Autumn Festival and Lunar New Year celebrations throughout the greater Hinsdale community. The programs began at Hinsdale Public Library and later expanded to Hinsdale Central High School and Hinsdale Covenant Church.

In 2026, with the support of Hinsdale Adventist Academy (HAA), Zhou launched an Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month celebration. The program has continued to grow, and the 2027 AANHPI Heritage Month celebration is now included on HAA’s school calendar.

From the outset, these programs were intentionally designed not simply as one-time events, but as new multicultural traditions for the community. In 2025, the Village of Hinsdale officially proclaimed October “Mid-Autumn Moon Festival Month.” In 2026, Hinsdale’s Mid-Autumn Festival became part of the community’s America 250 programming.

In the United States, Zhou has more than a decade of experience teaching and tutoring children and adolescents. Drawing on her professional background in curriculum design, she developed a comprehensive, structured Chinese-language learning system specifically for children growing up in the United States. Her students have included children from Chinese American families, multiracial families, and families with no Asian cultural background.

Her approach uses pinyin as a foundation for independent learning and provides students with clear goals and methods for both reviewing previously learned material and acquiring new knowledge. It also places strong emphasis on students’ emotional readiness and preparedness for learning. Through structured language and music-based learning, she adapts instruction to the needs, pace, and learning profile of each student.

Her broader educational work has included:

• A 12-part series on parenting, family education, and adolescent development, as well as the management of “Let’s Talk Education,” a private parent community she founded more than ten years ago that now includes more than 100 parents in the United States and China;
• The creation and long-term leadership of learning groups for children and teenagers, many of which have continued for two to eight years. These programs have addressed a wide range of developmental needs, including spoken journaling, storytelling, reading, writing, interviewing, filmmaking, scientific exploration, public speaking, critical and reflective thinking, teamwork, and leadership development. They have also included student passion projects such as an LED Tetris game board and a documentary project following 21 college applicants;
• Guest lectures on cultural differences between China and the United States for high school East Asian history classes, as well as communications and outreach work for the high school Music Boosters, where she created and manages the organization’s Facebook, Instagram, and X accounts and produces its monthly newsletter;
• The Eastern Culture Series, a four- to six-session community learning series introducing aspects of Chinese and East Asian culture through hands-on learning and shared experiences;
• Service as a Sunday school teacher at Hinsdale Covenant Church, where over the years she has taught children in several age groups, including infants and toddlers ages 0–3, preschoolers ages 3–5, and elementary students in grades 1–5. She also serves on the church’s welcome team and previously served with its worship technology team.

Across these different educational settings, Zhou consistently emphasizes the development of students’ ability to communicate in public, think independently, read and write effectively, and interact, communicate, and collaborate with others.

Before immigrating to the United States, Zhou was a bridge engineering specialist in Guangdong Province and an associate professor. She spent ten years working in higher education in China across teaching, research, and professional engineering practice. During that period, she also spent one year working in the private sector, serving in engineering management and senior technical leadership roles—including Engineering Department Manager, Deputy Chief Engineer, and Deputy General Manager—with responsibility for bridge health monitoring and inspection work.

At South China University of Technology, Zhou served as a graduate advisor for master’s students and a co-advisor for doctoral students, as well as Teaching Director for the bridge engineering program. Her responsibilities included curriculum planning and revision for undergraduate and graduate programs, allocation of teaching assignments, and professional training for engineers.

Zhou was also a newspaper columnist. After receiving first prize in the inaugural National Bridge Culture Week writing competition, she wrote the “World Bridge Culture” column for China Communications News for several years. These articles combined engineering expertise, extensive research, cultural and historical context, and narrative storytelling, making complex technical subjects accessible to general readers while also providing professionals with content of genuine technical depth.

Let’s Connect

We welcome opportunities to collaborate with libraries, schools, community organizations, cultural institutions, artists, educators, and local partners.

Email Lucy: lucy.zhou@hinsdalehmae.org
General HMAE inquiries: info@hinsdalehmae.org

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