Mei Ciqi: Unlocking students’ potential is the duty of teachers

Editor's note

Mei Ciqi, Associate Professor at the School of Public Policy and Management of Tsinghua University and Dean of Xinya College, has made himself known to a much wider public through his several thought-provoking lectures, such as “Three functions of failure in college life” at the opening ceremony, “Imperfect public administration” during the pandemic.

Let’s read Mei's story to learn more about his passion for teaching and how he employs innovative teaching techniques to unlock students’ full potential.

Pursuit of quality education 

The foundation of good education lies in teaching, and the foundation of good teaching lies in teachers. Mei always keeps that in mind and pursues it with determination.

Classroom education is the main channel to talent cultivation. As an educator, Mei has constantly been innovating pedagogical methodology, devoting himself to providing quality education.

In Mei's view, the pursuit of quality education never ends. "I try to build self-consistent systems for each course. Before class, I will spend long time analyzing the logic of my class so that I can enter the flow state in advance. After class, I will also collect feedback from my students for further modification and improvement,” says Mei.

Every time his course ends, Mei’s students are often left with the feeling of wanting to hear more from him.

The course “Basics of Political Science” taught by Mei Ciqi was recently selected as one of the fourth batches of "exemplar courses" at Tsinghua University. This course is organized around the core theories of political science, and answers how public power arises, how it is organized, how it is managed, and how it is restricted from the perspectives of political philosophy and science.

In Mei's classes, knowledge teaching and knowledge application are intertwined. To let students comprehend and apply knowledge better, he often encourages them to simulate realistic political scenes through role-playing. By turning the latticed bed into a secret polling site and using the empty milk crate as a ballot box for election, Mei reuses waste materials and tries to create a “genuine” election site for students, enabling them to consider political issues more clearly and carefully. Such a curriculum not only raises students’ enthusiasm, but also helps them to acquire and apply what they have learned.

His students said that through the simulation, they gradually learned to think independently and apply their knowledge to find solutions to practical problems.

"Education itself is a constructive process," Mei said. "Teachers should plant the seeds of truth, kindness and beauty in students' minds and guide them to buckle their first buttons in life."

Searching solutions to real problems

Mei is an expert in central government-local government relations in China. "China today is a target for study that many researchers dreamed about," he said. “It's developing rapidly and constantly being challenged. These types of research opportunities are very rare."

China's institutional resilience and governance capacity in the fight against COVID-19 have provided vivid cases for researchers, presenting new theoretical issues and challenges. In Mei's article entitled "Policy style, consistency and the effectiveness of the policy mix in China’s fight against COVID-19", he offers a unique explanation for China’s performance during the pandemic: "A policy mix comprised traditional measures, i.e. strict community lockdown, cross-jurisdictional mobilization of resources and officials’ sanction contributed to the eventual effectiveness of China’s response to the pandemic." This paper was included in the latest edition of ESI Highly Cited Papers.

As an associate editor and editorial director of China Public Administration Review, Mei looks forward to seeing more young scholars devoting themselves to the study of China’s real issues. Since 2021, the China Public Administration Review has launched the "One Hour for a Youth Talent·Four Seasons" workshop to promote the growth of young scholars.

Telling China's stories

When Mei was the director of the Center of Writing and Communication of Tsinghua University, Mei led more than 20 young teachers to design the course “Writing and Communication”. 

“China itself is wonderful and needs to be spoken out,” says he.

From “Made in China,” "Cultural Heritage" to "History and Future of Artificial Intelligence,” "Chernobyl,” "China under the Epidemic," and "Education and Elites,” Mei and his team guided students to care about practical issues and explore China stories. This course is more than writing, it is also about the way of thinking.

“It not only opens up a new field for students, but also helps them to think logically about what they want to explore,” Mei says.

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Mei Ciqi: Unlocking students’ potential is the duty of teachers

Writers: Liu Han

Editors: Huang Fei, Sangeet Sangroula

Designer: Liu Han