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Hassenfeld Fund
Will Let Students
Work With Local
Communities on
Social Issues
This year, Hopkins-
Nanjing Center students
have an opportunity that
no other students have
enjoyed in the center’s
25-year history. Thanks
to the generosity and vision of the
Hassenfeld Family Foundation—a
stalwart supporter of the center
over the years—the HNC has created
the Hassenfeld Social Enterprise
Fund to allow students to
apply their knowledge to solving
problems.
Taking the collaborative spirit
of the HNC to new heights, the
fund will enable mixed teams of
Chinese and international students
to devise and implement innovative
solutions to difficult issues.
The competition selection
committee, which will reveal the
winning project in early 2012,
included students, faculty and
alumni—all equally distributed
between Chinese and international
participants. The committee
chose the project with the greatest
potential and best plan for continuing
the impact of the project
beyond the two-year timeline. All
students are eligible to build teams
and apply. Year one of the program
may focus less on social entrepreneurship
and more on creating
ways to spread the HNC’s accomplishments
to a larger audience.
The Hassenfeld family has
funded the venture through an
endowment gift that will make it
a permanent feature of the HNC
experience.
The HNC community is watching
with great anticipation as the
fund takes shape and leads the
center into exciting, uncharted
waters.
—Jason D. Patent
Academic Life at the
Hopkins-Nanjing Center
Students at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center enroll in the two-year master of
arts in International Studies or the one-year, graduate-level certificate
program in Chinese and American Studies. Eight distinguished professors
from the U.S., U.K. and Israel join the Nanjing University faculty
in challenging Chinese, American and international students to explore
issues in international relations; comparative politics; economic systems;
Chinese, American and international law; and the modern histories and contemporary
societies of China and the United States.
An elective mini-course series brings expert
practitioners to the center to teach in specialty
subject areas. Mini-courses this past year
included Urbanization in China taught by Toby
Lincoln, lecturer in modern Chinese urban
history at the University of Leicester; Alternative
Vision in American Cinema taught by Paula
Rabinowitz, visiting Fulbright Distinguished
Lecturer in American culture and professor of
English at the University of Minnesota; and
Chinese Labor in Its Domestic and International
Context taught by Seth Gurgel, New York
University law professor.
Faculty and students engaged in a variety
of extracurricular activities. The 2010-11
academic year began with the Jessup International
Law Moot Court Competition team’s regular
practices for their competition. In February 2011, the team went to Jinan for
the Chinese national competition, where they placed sixth against the best teams
in China. All four of the HNC team oralists finished in the top 15 competitors individually,
with first place taken by the center’s own Stanley Seiden N’11.
The HNC dragon boat team began practice in the spring for the annual Duanwu
Festival in June. Their efforts resulted in a third-place win for all of Nanjing before
an audience that included Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley.
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