MOT student Justin Seymour-Welch does Tandon proud at the China-America Student Conference

International Student Conferences is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that facilitates academic and cultural exchange programs organized by the students themselves. Five years ago, the group launched the annual China-America Student Conference (ChASC), devoted to promoting mutual understanding, friendship, and trust between the countries.

It would be difficult to imagine anyone more suited to contribute to ChASC than Justin Seymour-Welch, a graduate student in NYU Tandon’s Department of Technology Management and Innovation.

Seymour-Welch had studied Mandarin at his public high school in Massachusetts, and he minored in the language while earning an undergraduate degree at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Subsequently, thanks to a National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science (GEM) Fellowship, he spent the fall 2024 semester at NYU Shanghai, as part of a program that allows Management of Technology master’s students to begin their studies on an international campus before coming to Brooklyn. (That semester, he was the only native English speaker in the cohort, making it a deeply immersive experience.)

This year, while participating in a group chat with other members of the National Association for Black Engagement with Asia (NBEA), a group dedicated to offering Black perspectives in the U.S.-Asia dialogue, Seymour-Welch learned about the chance to participate in ChASC and successfully applied.

The event, which spanned almost the entire month of July, was jam-packed with visits to universities, museums, historical sites, embassies, and industrial facilities; roundtable discussions; a model U.N.; tea ceremonies; and social activities like karaoke. (The official itinerary spanned almost 20 pages.)

While it was his fourth time in China, ChASC offered him new experiences — and a strengthened belief in the importance of global collaboration. “We are two large and dynamic countries, and we must be able to cooperate,” he says. “As individuals and as nations, we have more in common than we might think.”