Hopkins-Nanjing Center Blog

Final papers are in, Chinese New Year is fast approaching, and Hopkins-Nanjing Center students are embarking on a much needed holiday between semesters. First-year MAIS student Nathan Rose reflects on his semester.    With the Fall 2021 semester coming to an end (and the year of the Tiger fast approaching), I reflected a bit on the past couple months. This semester had its challenges, but upon reflection I was surprised how much I gained. First, let’s address the elephant in the room: virtual learning is tough. There is no denying this. Students, teachers, administrators are all frustrated with it, but it is an unfortunate reality we all must face in our COVID world. As such, let me describe some of the realities I experienced this semester. Having class early in the morning and late in the evening is difficult—something made worse if you are located in an unideal time zone (HNC virtual classes are scheduled as a compromise between EST and Beijing time, with classes occurring ...

Master of Arts in International Studies (MAIS) student Albert Heidecke shares his best tips on balancing a full course load with an internship while studying at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center.  Just like any graduate program, the Hopkins-Nanjing Center attracts students who have a wide range of professional and academic backgrounds. Some students may have nearly a decade of work experience, while others may have only finished undergraduate study just before matriculating at the HNC. I could spend an hour talking about the merits of going straight to graduate school after undergrad or taking time off to gain work experience – but that’s for another blog post. The fact is that work experience is important. To play off the old phrase:  工作经验不是万能的，但没有工作经验是万万不能的  – work experience isn’t everything, but you must have some.  Most MAIS students at the HNC opt for interning full-time during the summer months between their first and second year, and for many people that’s enough. B...

Hailey McGleam ( 刘霖 ) is a first year MAIS student and ERE concentrator at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center. She is a ’21 Boren Fellow and currently based in Taipei, Taiwan. In addition to her HNC courseload, Hailey is also taking courses at Taiwan National University (NTU).    Why China, the HNC, and the Boren fellowship?   Coming to the Hopkins-Nanjing Center was by accident. I was originally a marine biology major and my best friend was Chinese and I started taking Chinese to talk with her mom. I realized at some point that I understood Chinese better than chemistry and thought, “Maybe I should keep taking Chinese.” When the HNC admissions representative came to our school, and they said the HNC had an ERE concentration, it blew my mind. I was taking four classes on Chinese culture, and was also an environmental science major, so what you find with that is that China is always coming up. It’s such a big polluter and in the West, they’ll say, “You can’t solve global climate p...

On December 10 th , Dr. Sergey Radchenko, a Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at SAIS Europe held a lecture at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center. In his lecture titled “Mongolia: Can it Survive?” Professor Radchenko, who has written extensively on Soviet, Russian, and Chinese foreign policies discussed Mongolia’s fate as a democratic nation landlocked between two authoritarian regimes.  When we are faced with the question “Can Mongolia Survive?” our first reaction may be: Why wouldn’t it survive? Where would it go? Perhaps a better question we should be asking ourselves is – can Mongolia survive as a democracy? While Mongolia has been stable in its democratic development since the 1990s, its two largest neighbors – China and Russia – have considerable influence both in their relationship with Mongolia, and within the international community.  Dr. Radchenko examined the likelihood that China or Russia will attempt to influence Mongolian politics in three sections: the historic...