The Asian American Association (AAA), the second largest student group on campus, elected Alexander T. Nguyen '99 and Grace Y. Shieh '99 as co-presidents for the coming year yesterday.

Shieh and Nguyen ran as a ticket on a platform of member education and interaction with other minority groups on campus.

"What Grace and I hope to accomplish is to be a greater presence on campus both in terms of education and also working with other groups, both politically and socially," Nguyen said after the election.

The presidents-elect stressed the role of education in informed political action.

"Obviously, we have to be prepared for everything, but unless you know what's going on, you can't react," said Nguyen, who is a Crimson editor. "The first step is to be educated."

Shieh agreed.

"We feel that before we can do anything that's meaningful, we have to be knowledgeable and enlightened about the issues that we face," she said.

Nguyen said he and Shieh hope to reincarnate AAA's weekly study group as a multimedia "think tank," which would include elements of Asian American culture and current events.

Such a forum would include "general arts in all forms of media" and would facilitate a study group that was less "preparation-intensive" than the current format, Shieh said.

The group's outgoing president, Sewell Chan '98, highlighted the increased diversity of the new officers, which he said reflects that of AAA as a whole.

"Never before has AAA had a more experienced and diverse group of new officers taking charge," said Chan in a statement.

"AAA has grown from being a small group of activist students in the mid-1970's to a broad-ranging group that serves an incredibly diverse population," said Chan, who is a Crimson editor.

Nguyen is Vietnamese-American and Shieh is Taiwanese-American.

AAA members also chose Brian S. Im '98 and Nikhil Chandra '99 as co-vice presidents and Paula V. Fernandez '99, who ran unopposed, as secre- tary-historian.

All five of AAA's new top officers are veteran leaders of the group. Incoming co-presidents Shieh and Nguyen both served as AAA officers this year, Shieh as head of November's Asian-American Cultural Month and Nguyen as the group's historian.

In their position papers, which AAA posted on the group's website, all the candidates stressed the need to find a common ground among the different national groups that comprise AAA's membership.

The group also elected new publicity chairs Herman Lee '98, Grace Liu '00 and Amresh Raina '99; new educational chairs Jay F. Chen '00 and Ravi K. Dixit '00; and new cultural chairs Tara I. Chang '99 and Claire Tseng '99.

AAA members chose Sujit M. Raman '00 and Jennifer H. Wu '99 as AAA's representatives to the Minority Student Alliance and the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations.

Caroline T. Nguyen '00 and Kelly M. Yamanouchi '00, a Crimson editor, were elected social chairs.

Between Thursday and Sunday, 192 of the group's estimated 1,200 members voted over e-mail or using the World Wide Web, the largest number of voters ever in an AAA election, according to the organization.

AAA, which was founded in 1976, celebrated its 20th anniversary this fall