Growing up in Beijing, I’ve always had a special admiration for the Schwarzman Scholars program, a one-year master program at Tsinghua University. For this column I was thrilled to interview Isabella Lichen, who had just traveled back from Beijing after finishing her one-year master with Schwarzman Scholars.

A double-major in Chinese and biology modified with chemistry, Bella had started thinking of attending a graduate program since junior spring. She knew she didn’t want to start medical school right away, so she went through fellowship advisory at Dartmouth and stumbled upon Schwarzman. The program offered the learning experience that she was looking for and a perfect opportunity to visit China given her language study abroad at Beijing Normal University was canceled due to Covid.

Bella arrived in China in the fall of 2022. After a two-week hotel quarantine in Shanghai and one-week at-home quarantine in Beijing, she started her year-long program at Schwarzman College, a residential college within Tsinghua University and the homebase of the Schwarzman program. As a part of the program Bella needed to complete a capstone project. Because the students had to plan for resources and find an advisor, they needed to define a field of interest early in the year. Knowing that she wanted to research something healthcare-related, Bella soon identified the current time period in China was particularly special given the rapid changes in Covid-related policies and restrictions.

After four years of “zero-Covid” policies, at the end of 2022 China finally began rolling back restrictions. Daily Covid cases surged rapidly soon after the restrictions were lifted, and the healthcare system was facing severe stress from the unprecedented numbers of Covid infections and deaths. During these months Bella conducted a qualitative study on how public and private Chinese hospitals managed Covid before and after lifting restrictions and as the country was pushed into a new normalcy. She emphasized that she felt extremely lucky to talk to people about their experiences and observe the day-to-day life of physicians. Although some were wary about sharing their experiences with a foreigner, physically being in the hospitals was still an incredible learning experience for Bella.

Schwarzman Scholars accepts college graduates from ages 19 to 29, so her classmates had a spectrum of life experiences before the program. Some were recent graduates like Bella, but others were well into their careers. Some have already gone through what she wanted to do, so she not only had the perspective of witnessing a public health crisis in China but also the wisdom from classmates who have completed medical school.

“It was crazy to see history unfold in front of me,” Bella explained, adding that her year in Beijing has inspired her to think deeper about medical school. She has gained more interest in global and public health because although China’s Covid restriction lift turned into a public health crisis, the accessibility and affordability of general healthcare still makes an impressive case study. Studying in China while Covid restrictions were lifted was completely unexpected for her, but the year in Beijing has given her more perspectives on the impact of policymaking on the well-being of a community.

In other news, huge congratulations to Katie Lutz for attending Columbia Law School this fall! If you’d like to share any exciting life updates or want to be featured for future columns, please feel free to send them directly to me or to Dartmouth Alumni Magazine.

—Louisa Gao, 279 E 44th St, Apt 3L, New York, NY 10017; louisa.gao0922@gmail.com