On May 20, at the EALL department graduation reception, three students were officially inducted into the National Collegiate Chinese Honor Society. These students are: Aidan Labadie, May Kipnis, Jake Messick.
The National Collegiate Chinese Honor Society is sponsored by the Chinese Language Teachers Association, USA (CLTA). This society is founded to recognize the outstanding academic achievement of college students in learning Chinese as a second language, to encourage them to continue to study Chinese after they graduate from college, and to promote the study of Chinese language, literature, and culture in the United States.
To be inducted into the National Collegiate Chinese Honor Society and receive its certificate, students must meet a series of qualifications, including a good GPA and strong evidence of engagement and commitment to Chinese language and culture related in school or community activities.
This is the first year that we nominated three of our students, whose applications were successful. All of these students have many achievements that merit mentioning, and the following is a brief introduction to one major achievement of each student.
- Aidan Labadie will graduate later this year, and he majors in International Affairs and Chinese. Aidan only started to learn Chinese in college. During his sophomore year he took a gap semester to pursue personal language learning. Upon his return to GW, Aidan was able to skip three semesters of Chinese and enter advanced level courses, and has been doing very well. Aidan’s stellar progress in Chinese demonstrates his strong passion and motivation for studying the Chinese language and culture. Pictured on the left is Aidan presented with a certificate to the Honor Society by Professor Hongyuan Dong.
- May Kipnis, class of 2023, majors in Chinese. May did two research projects during the past two semesters to look at the origin and impacts of current Chinese language policy, especially how such policies affected minority language communities, for example, in Inner Mongolia. The research that May has done shows a high level of critical thinking skills and cogent writing skills. Her interdisciplinary research methods touch upon linguistics, anthropology and history, synthesizing knowledge of various courses taken in college. Pictured in the middle is May presented with a certificate to the Honor Society.
- Jake Messick, class of 2023, double majors in Mathematics and Chinese. He has just completed his Honors Thesis for his major in Chinese. Jake did innovative interdisciplinary research on the second scheme of simplified Chinese characters, from sociopolitical, linguistic and computational perspectives. He presented his research twice, first in the CCAS research showcase and then in the Chinese program. All of our faculty members were very impressed by the originality and quality of his research. Pictured on the right is Jake presented with a certificate to the Honor Society.
Congratulations to Aidan, May, Jake for their achievements!