Student blogger Amanda Walencewicz (Certificate '20)
writes about her experience as one of five Hopkins-Nanjing
Center students
participating in the Committee of 100’s C100 Scholars Program.
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| (L-R) Joshua Cartwright, Erica Carvell, Alex Cowen, Eric Lacour, and Amanda Walencewicz receive certificates for their acceptance to the C100 Scholars Program. |
This year, the Hopkins-Nanjing Center (HNC) was invited to nominate five students for the Committee of 100’s C100 Scholars Program, a program for outstanding Chinese scholars in its fifteenth year that was recently expanded to include American scholars. The 2019 program includes a trip to Shanghai for the C100 Greater China Conference and Gala and a study tour of Shanghai, Suzhou, Nanjing, and Hangzhou in January 2020.
The Greater China Conference and Gala took place the first weekend of December at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Shanghai, with the HNC cohort arriving on Friday afternoon for a C100 Scholars welcome dinner. There we met over 50 more 2019 C100 Scholars from universities across China and five major international programs: Yenching Academy at Peking University, Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University, Duke Kunshan, and NYU Shanghai. Our Hopkins-Nanjing Center group especially got to know the scholars from Nanjing University, and plan to get dinner with the 2019 scholars and past C100 alumni soon.
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| Joshua Cartwright and Erica Carvell talk to C100 member Dr. Edmond Pi |
The next day began with the business summit portion of the conference, featuring panels on market access and IP protection, the future of financial technology, innovation in healthcare, and the development of Asian consumerism. It was an opportunity to hear leaders across a variety of sectors discuss current prospects and challenges in the business landscape in China. Later that evening, we attended the awards gala dinner, which honored President George H.W. Bush for a lifetime of advancing U.S.-China relations and included performances from opera singers Zhang Jun and Tian Haojiang.
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| The Hopkins-Nanjing Center cohort listens to a panel during the business summit. |
Sunday was devoted to the C100 Scholars Program, beginning with an awards ceremony for all participants. The day also involved two more panels on higher education and entrepreneurship, and keynotes from the President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and the Chancellor of NYU Shanghai. Most valuable for us scholars, however, was the mentorship program session, in which scholars could choose between 20 tables with two mentors each and chat with them for an hour. Making these kinds of connections was an emphasis of the entire program, and it was great to meet professionals from a wide range of educational and professional backgrounds.
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| Amanda Walencewicz (left) listens to advice from C100 member Dr. David C. Chang. |
The weekend ended with another dinner for all of the scholars, where we elected the Chinese and American presidents of our 2019 cohort (including the Hopkins-Nanjing Center’s own Erica Carvell as American co-president).
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| Hopkins-Nanjing Center student Erica Carvell (left), Priscilla Guo of Schwarzman College, and Sun Huaxin of Sun Yat-sen University were elected the presidents of the C100 Scholars Class of 2019. |
Exhausted from a full weekend of activities, we reluctantly left our fellow scholars and rushed to catch our train back to Nanjing. I left Shanghai grateful for the experience and looking forward to our study trip in January 2020.
Written by Amanda Walencewicz, HNC Certificate '20
