UCLA Center for East Asian Studies
Introduction to the
work of
UCLA Center for East Asian Studies
The UCLA branch of the USC-UCLA Joint Center for East Asian Studies is the oldest of the six Asian area centers in the International Studies and Overseas Program at UCLA. Since its designation by the U.S. Department of Education as a Title VI National Resource Center in 1975, it has offered a rich and varied program of outreach initiatives designed to promote increased awareness of the diverse cultures, histories, languages and contemporary studies of China, Japan, and Korea.
Educational Outreach
As part of our educational outreach effort, the UCLA CEAS operates, within the UCLA International and Area Studies Summer Institute, the largest and longest standing seminar program on East Asia for K-12 teachers in Southern California (the East Asia/Pacific Rim Seminar), enrolling over 150 teachers from more than 95 schools in over 15 school districts since 1990. CEAS also provides on-site training of teachers, development of curriculum resources, and websites providing assistance to teachers and students. At present, the Center has received a generous grant from the Consulate General of Japan to develop middle school curriculum units and is also collaborating (with the USC branch of our Joint Center for East Asian Studies in the lead) with Portola Middle School (Los Angeles Unified School District) on an National Endowment for the Humanities funded web-based curriculum and staff development project. The Center is also working with the Pacific Rim program at Arcadia High School and with other school districts on improving instruction on East Asia. Other projects involve linking world history classes at University High School with partners in Asia. The CEAS website supports K-12 education via lesson plans and background readings for teachers, statistical tables and graphs, and pictures and texts linked to key events and issues in East Asian history.
Community Outreach
In addition, the Center presents the UCLA East Asia Speakers Series that brings leading policy makers, journalists and business leaders to UCLA. The series has featured Chief Secretary Anson Chan, Finance Secretary Donald Tsang, Solicitor General Daniel Fung of Hong Kong, U.S. Ambassadors James Lilley and Nicholas Platt, Japanese Consul-General Noboru Seiichiro, Chinese Ambassador Lu Zhizhou, and Far Eastern Economic Review Editor Frank Ching. It has organized conferences on the Intellectual Property Rights in China, Presidential Elections in Taiwan, Hong Kong's reversion to China, and the Asian Financial Crisis. The Center also sponsors the Pan-Asian Film Festival organized by the UCLA Film Archive, which has featured award-winning directors Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang from Taiwan and Wong Kar-wai, King Hu, and Peter Chen from Hong Kong. Thanks to support from business groups, the Center has been able to "bring UCLA into the community" through forums held at locations throughout the region. In advance of the tenth anniversary of China's 1989 Tiananmen Square Democracy Movement, the series brought just-released Chinese dissident student leader Wang Dan to UCLA. In October 1998, the series featured a presentation by Wei Jingsheng, who spent most of the 1980s and 1990s in prison for his advocacy of democracy as essential to China's modernization. Hong Kong Democratic Party leader Martin Lee spoke to two large UCLA audiences on political, legal and economic developments during the region's first year under restored Chinese sovereignty.
Student Support
CEAS awards annually $150,000 in National Resource Fellowships to support UCLA graduate students as they develop their East Asian language skills or conduct research. Sixteen students from seven disciplines were supported in 2000-2001. Twelve students from seven departments were supported in 1999-2000.
CEAS also coordinates the selection and support of Sammy Lee fellowship recipients. Through the generosity of the Sammy Yu-kuan Lee Foundation, one student from Hong Kong each year is able to embark each year on a UCLA adventure. The Foundation provides the student, assuming satisfactory performance, with tuition and room and board for the duration of his or her undergraduate training.
Regional Academic Exchange
CEAS also provides over $20,000 a year for acquisitions and cataloging to the Richard C. Rudolph East Asian Library at UCLA, which is now the best East Asian collection in Southern California and ranks as the 13th in the United States. CEAS provides financial support for the Southern California Japan Seminar, the Southern California China Colloquium, and the Southern California Korea Colloquium. Each of these regional bodies organizes a series of conferences and guest lectures that attract academics from throughout the region.
Language Instruction Improvement
Since 1996, CEAS has sponsors comparative analyses of the sequencing and linguistic and cultural content of the East Asian language instructional programs at UCLA and USC. The UCLA Language Resource Program (LRP) is carrying out these studies which will permit assessment of the content validity of existing or planned placement tests for these languages. Further, it will allow comparison of instructional programs and practices across institutional lines and encourage informed discussion on strengthening the teaching of these languages. CEAS funds also support other LRP-managed projects such as symposia on the use of web technology in language teaching and teaching assistant training workshops. Further, the Center has sent UCLA East Asian language teaching faculty to appropriate national conferences.
Affiliated Faculty and Cross-Campus Collaboration
CEAS has more than seventy UCLA faculty affiliates. More than half of these faculty members serve in departments under the College of Letters and Sciences, but others come from Law, Medicine, Management, Arts and Architecture, Public Policy, Education, and Theater, Film and Television. The Center collaborates with individual faculty from a number of programs, but also works with the Schools of Management and Law and the UCLA Film Archive in hosting many events, including conferences and festivals.
International Scholarly Collaboration Using New Media
In partnership with Beijing University's Guanghua School of Management and UCLA's Anderson Graduate School of Management, the Center is creating a website, Global Windows: China, to provide reliable, one-stop, and user-friendly information on doing business in China. This website draws upon and expands on the award-winning Global Windows: Japan project designed by Archie Kleingartner (Anderson Graduate School of Management) and has received major support from the U.S. Department of Education's Foreign Information Access Program.
