INDIANAPOLIS – The honors continue to roll in for Erin Chen, who graduated from Johns Hopkins in May after a standout four-year career on the Blue Jay women's fencing team.  Chen was recently named Johns Hopkins' nominee for the 2020 NCAA Woman of the Year and has moved to the next round of the process as she is one of 161 individuals who have been named a conference-level nominee.
 
Initially, Chen was among the record 605 nominees for the award, which included 259 nominees from Division I, 126 from Division II and 220 from Division III.
 
Today's announcement trims that number to 161 and includes 59 individuals from Division I, 39 from Division II and 63 from Division III.  While 21 different sports are represented among the 161 conference-level nominees, Chen is the only fencer among the conference-level nominees.
 
The NCAA Woman of the Year program is rooted in Title IX and has recognized graduating female college athletes for excellence in academics, athletics, community service and leadership since its inception in 1991.
 
The Woman of the Year Selection Committee, made up of representatives from the NCAA membership, will now choose the Top 30 honorees — 10 from each division — from the conference-level nominees. The Top 30 honorees will be announced in September. From there, the selection committee will narrow the pool to three finalists from each division. The NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics will select the 2020 Woman of the Year from the nine finalists.
 
Annually, member schools are encouraged to honor their top graduating female college athletes by submitting their names for consideration for the Woman of the Year Award. Schools can recognize two nominees if at least one is a woman of color or international student-athlete.
 
Chen is the winningest fencer in Johns Hopkins history (male or female) and counts 364 wins in her career. She also holds the women's fencing record for wins in a season (113). A three-time EWFC Sabre Fencer of the Year and four-time all-conference selection, she was named the 2020 EWFC Woman of the Year. She placed in the top-20 at the NCAA Mid-Atlantic/South Regional and top-five at the NIWFA Championships in each of her four years. She won the NIWFA Sabre title and placed a career-best eighth at the NCAA Regional in 2017.
 
One of just two fencers among the original 605 nominees, Chen recently earned First Team CoSIDA Academic All-America honors.  She is the first Johns Hopkins women's fencer to earn Academic All-America honors and the first Division III women's fencer to be a first team selection since 2002.  She is one of just eight all-time Division III women's fencers to earn Academic All-America honors and just the second to be named to the first team.
 
Chen, who graduated with a degree in molecular and cellular biology and a 3.90 cumulative GPA, had a pair of papers published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics and has been a research assistant at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and in the Watanabe Lab at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Cell Biology Department. She was also a teaching assistant in the computer science department from February 2019 until her graduation in May.
 
Chen was the quality and compliance chair as well as senior volunteer for the transitional volunteer program at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center Emergency Department for more than three years and she was a team leader and health resource counselor for Charm City Care Connection for over two years.  Since November 2016, Chen has been volunteering with Thread as a head of family and volunteer recruitment team member. Along with a "family" of volunteers, they will support and tutor a student from Baltimore for 10 years both in and outside of the classroom. In November 2018, she began volunteering as a care-giver for a quadriplegic multiple sclerosis patient and she is the co-founder and vice-president of the Johns Hopkins Special Olympics Club.