On April 18, 2019, Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management (Tsinghua SEM) held a ceremony to award the 2018 WEI Jie Scholarships to a group of student authors who wrote highly regarded academic papers. The founder of the scholarship, WEI Jie, a professor from the Department of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategy, and a Hon Hai Chair Professor of Tsinghua SEM; Professor ZHAO Dongqing, Deputy Party Secretary of Tsinghua SEM CPC Committee; QU Weijing, Director of the Graduate Student Task Force of Tsinghua SEM; GUO Zhaohui, Director of the Student Task Force and Student Affairs Office of Tsinghua SEM took part in the event emceed by WANG Min, Deputy Director of the Resource Development Office.

Professor WEI Jie briefed his audience on how the academic papers were selected. He said a committee consisting of seven professors from Peking University and Renmin University of China adopted strict criteria for reviewing and selecting the academic papers. He thought highly of the selected papers and the academic journals that they were published in. Professor WEI also offered some advice and encouraged the students to keep up with their hard work and be brave for innovation. He hoped that they would focus on China’s hot-button economical and social issues, do in-depth research and make a positive contribution to society.

WEI Jie speaks at the ceremony.

ZHAO Dongqing said that Professor WEI was the first incumbent Tsinghua SEM professor who used his royalties to start a scholarship. And his generous giving and great care for academic talent education certainly commanded respect. ZHAO said that Professor WEI was a prolific author and won the SUN Yefang Economic Science Award and the first prize of the Chinese National Book Award, among some other national awards. She pointed out that the WEI Jie Scholarships were also for encouraging young students to take the baton from older generations and carry on with academic research work. ZHAO congratulated the scholarship winners, and hoped that they would follow Professor WEI’s example, work hard and accomplish more in the future.

ZHAO Dongqing speaks at the ceremony.

The scholarship winners thanked Tsinghua SEM and Professor WEI for their support and talked about how they grew into academic researchers. They said that they would stay grateful, never forget their original aspirations and work harder to do more for the country.

The scholarship winners speak at the ceremony.

WANG Min emcees the ceremony.

All the participants in the ceremony

Established with a fund donated by Professor WEI in 2015, the WEI Jie Scholarships are for supporting Tsinghua SEM’s talent education, encouraging students to innovate and helping them raise their academic research standards. Any Tsinghua SEM student who publishes a paper in an academic journal in China or other countries or has a paper included in Chinese or foreign conference proceedings is eligible to apply for a WEI Jie scholarship. Forty students won the scholarships for 2018. Twenty of them got the second prize, nineteen the third prize, and one the excellent prize.