At Grinnell Yang took on various leadership roles. He was elected Chapter Editor of Grinnell’s Cosmopolitan Club in 1922 (SB 10/14/1922) and later became president of the Grinnell chapter and launched a reorganization effort in 1923 (SB 09/26/1923). He was selected to serve on the program committee of the Macy Club (SB 10/03/1923) and was appointed to the Booster Committee of the Men’s Senate, charged with “working out stunts” at athletic contests to “create pep” (SB 09/29/1923). Unsurprisingly, he also remained highly active in initiatives by the Chinese students. He played the lead role in a Grinnell College stage adaptation of the Chinese folklore story, “The Cowherd and Weaver Maid” (SB 02/09/1924). In 1922 he oversaw a highly successful benefits dinner that raised funds for Grinnell-in-China (SB 11/15/1922) and Yang led the 1923 Grinnell celebration of the founding of the Republic of China (SB 10/12/1923). 

Yang was an eloquent speaker and writer. He not only qualified for the annual Hyde Original Oration Contest in 1923 (SB 05/26/1923), but also, together with fellow Chinese students such as K. C. Wu as representatives of the Chinese Students Club, put on a program at the local Congregational church; Yang spoke on “The Changing Attitudes of the Chinese People toward Westerners” (SB 10/21/1922). More remarkable still, he joined one of the three Grinnell College gospel teams and went to Gilman, Iowa to hold a service that consisted of music performance and speeches on Christianity. The Scarlet and Black estimated that the three teams collectively drew over 800 attendees and achieved great success in Montour and Marshalltown, as well as in Gilman (SB 11/17/1923).   

While Yang demonstrated his ability and collegiality to work alongside American as well as Chinese students, he was not afraid to speak out against prevailing trends. In 1923, for example, he published a letter to the editor in the Scarlet and Black, criticizing the “business point of view” shown in that year’s college-wide fundraising campaign for Grinnell-in-China. Although acknowledging that “China today needs some help from America,” he objected to promoting the program “on an investment basis” and “satisfy[ing] one [race]’s lofty ideal at the expense of the self-respect of another [race].”  At the same time, he was careful to invoke the Grinnell spirit of service and ended the letter with a plea for fellow Grinnellians to preserve “the fiber of American idealism” (SB 11/07/1923). In this letter Yang showed not just felicity with the English language but also his awareness of, and agile movement between, Chinese cultural pride and American college allegiance, however transient the latter might turn out to be.  

Yang graduated from Grinnell in 1924, earning a bachelor’s degree in economics and business administration. He then reportedly attended Columbia University and earned a master’s degree, though the records at Columbia cannot verify those facts. A local Grinnell newspaper also reported that he was planning to attend Grinnell for another year after graduation in 1924, while praising him as “one of the deservedly popular Chinese students here, having made many friends” (GH 06/17/1924). Yang returned to China in spring 1925, after a grand send-off party in New York City attended by President J. H. T. Main and several Grinnellians, including fellow Chinese alumni T. H. Cheng (’24), C. C. Ma (’24), and T. C. Chao (’23) (SB 04/25/1925). After his 1925 return to China, Yang taught English at his alma mater Utopia, but died of an undisclosed illness in summer 1926.