Hopkins-Nanjing Center Blog

Student blogger Tarela Osuobeni shares her experience adjusting to the bilingual community at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center and her strategies for overcoming the learning curve. Arriving in China to start my year at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, I first experienced the benefits of language immersion at the Shanghai airport. Having been in the U.S. for a month after being in Suzhou for the Critical Language Scholarship eight-week language immersion program, I was initially afraid that I had lost some of my language skills. However, the flow and familiarity of the words came back to me as I asked for directions and talked with my taxi drivers. I arrived at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center near midnight and found an HNC staff member waiting at the desk to hand me my room keys and check me into my room. When I got to my room, I fumbled around for the information I needed to connect to the internet, trying not to wake up my roommate. I found the sheet that provided directions, but panicked when I re...

The Hopkins-Nanjing Center is pleased to welcome Adam Webb as the new American Co-Director. He has served on the faculty at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center as Resident Professor of Political Science for over 10 years. He holds a PhD in politics from Princeton University and has previously taught at Princeton and Harvard, and served as a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research interests encompass political thought, globalization, and critiques of modernity, and his research has addressed topics including social movements, alternative development, and the rise of China . How did you come to teach at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center? I first came to the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in 2008, after a few years of teaching at Harvard. I was originally expecting that I would stay a year or two as an opportunity to reconnect with China. I found the potential and unique environment very appealing, however, and have now been based here for over a decade. Based on your ...

The admissions deadline recently passed for applicants applying to join the Hopkins-Nanjing Center this fall. For those of you who are considering applying in the future, the admissions team has compiled tips for ways you can strengthen your application over the coming year.  Continue studying Chinese Most importantly, continue working on your Chinese language skills! It’s great if you are able to enroll in Chinese classes or spend a semester abroad in an immersive language program. If that’s not possible for you, find ways to engage with the language on a regular basis, such as making a self-study plan, finding a language tutor, watching Chinese movies or TV shows, and reading Chinese news articles.  You are welcome to take the Hopkins-Nanjing Center’s STAMP Chinese Proficiency Test at any time, which is required for admission to all programs. Your scores are valid for one year, and you can take the test once every three months. Taking the test early can help gauge your...

Student blogger Tarela Osuobeni, Certificate ’17, MA ’19, gives some tips on transitioning between the Hopkins-Nanjing Center Certificate and Johns Hopkins SAIS MA program. What is the biggest difference between studying at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center and Johns Hopkins SAIS in DC? Tip: The academic goals and environment of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center and Johns Hopkins SAIS are different in some respects. Think about how you want each program to contribute to your career goals and professional development.  The Hopkins-Nanjing Center Certificate and Johns Hopkins SAIS MA study experience are different in that they can help you enhance different skills. While both programs center on international relations, coursework in Nanjing inherently has a language and cultural immersion aspect to it. Hopkins-Nanjing Center courses will require you to think, read, and articulate yourself in Chinese. Through lectures, discussions, and debates, I was able to practice thinking and speaking abo...

Student Blogger Hope Parker, MAIS ’20, reflects on some useful skills for a successful semester at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center. As the fall semester at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center wraps up, Certificate and first-year MAIS students have developed some study tips, based on their experiences this semester. I have compiled my own and other students’ recommendations to help students who are preparing to come to the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in future years. Class notes Vocabulary Lists Before coming to the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, I heard it was helpful to create vocabulary lists before class. I have found it most useful to prepare a list of what seem to be the most important words from a particular day’s assigned readings. Especially at the beginning of the semester, it is useful to review the words before class, or to refer to them during class while discussing the topics. As the semester goes on, it is easier to remember new words, and there are fewer new words to study. Even though ...

Student blogger Cady Deck, Certificate ’19, shares her experience participating in a research trip for the Hopkins-Nanjing Center course Chinese and American Thought: Bilingual Perspectives. My group on top of Shika Snow Mountain in Shangri-La Over fall break, I went to Yunnan Province to conduct research with classmates from the course Chinese and American Thought: Bilingual Perspectives. This was an opportunity that I didn’t even know existed before coming to the Hopkins-Nanjing Center. There are other classes offered during the school year that include research trips, which I think is something that makes the Hopkins-Nanjing Center experience unique. For a couple of weeks before the trip, we learned about the area in Yunnan known as Shangri-La and its characteristics, including religions, myths, and ethnic diversity. The class then split into three groups, focusing on either the myth of Shangri-La, Tibetan Buddhism in Shangri-La, or ethnic minorities in Shangri-La. Each inte...

Student blogger Cady Deck, Certificate ’19, shares her experience taking an English and Chinese co-taught class offered this semester.  Class field trip to Maoshan, a Daoist mountain near Nanjing This semester I am taking Chinese and American Thought: Bilingual Perspectives, which is a new course that is co-taught in English and Chinese. It examines Chinese and Western thought, focusing specifically on religion, philosophy, and law. It is a fairly broad course with a lot of potential for discussion. We have taken several short field trips to places in or near Nanjing, which are related to topics we talk about in class. We also went on a week-long research trip to Shangri-La in Yunnan province over fall break. Aside from the field trip, one of the major benefits of this class is that half of the students in the class are Chinese and the other half are international students. Additionally, it is co-taught by an American professor and a Chinese professor. Both professors have e...