Issue No. 1
October 1, 2007
Compiled by: Dr. Jonathan Noble, Advisor for Asia Initiatives
Office of the Provost
Center for Asian Studies (CAS)
The Center for Asian Studies (CAS) features participation by over forty faculty and staff members serving twelve major departments or offices campus wide. Associate Professor Susan Blum is the director of CAS.
The Center’s Undergraduate Asia Group and Asia Graduate Group have new faculty advisors, Associate Professor Agustin Fuentes and Assistant Professor Sylvia Lin, respectively.
CAS co-sponsored Asia-related events and lectures on campus, including Sir John Bond’s talk “China: A Perspective” and Dr. Pravina Shukla’s talk “Aesthetic Complexity and Social Tension in the Art of Dress in Modern India” on September 27, 2007.
New Faculty, Visiting Fellows, and Research
Research Professor Robert Gimello, renown scholar on Buddhism, joins Notre Dame from Harvard.
Assistant Professor Jayanta Sengupta, a South East Asian historian, joins the history department after having taught at Jadavpur University, India, and the Universities of Cambridge.
East Asian Languages and Cultures is conducting a national search for two Assistant Professional Specialists, one each for Chinese and Korean languages.
2007-2008 Kellogg Institute Visiting Fellows include three Asian specialists: Simanti Lahiri, specializing in South Asian politics, Dr. Yung C. Lee, a specialist in Korean labor policy, and Noor O’Neill Borbieva, a postdoctoral fellow in anthropology researching local communities in the Kyrgyz Republic.
Gates Foundation granted $20 million to Notre Dame faculty to support malaria control research in African countries and Indonesia.
Student Enrollment in Asian languages and Asian studies
Over 130 students are enrolled in Chinese language courses during the fall 2007 semester. Eighty-five students are enrolled in Japanese language. Thirty-two students are at the fourth year or advanced level in Chinese and Japanese.(1)
Over 260 students in the College of Arts and Letters are enrolled in an array of twelve courses that teach about Asia.(2)
Thirty-three students will spend either an academic year or one semester studying abroad in China or Japan 2007-2008 in study abroad programs through the Office of International Studies (excluding summer).(3)
Programs and Opportunities
Three students interned in India through the Kellogg Institute Internship Program during the summer of 2007.
One student interned in Nepal through the Kellogg Institute Experiencing The World Fellowships in the summer of 2007.
A student exchange program with the Chinese University of Hong Kong is slated to begin during the fall semester of 2008.
NBC Sports selected Notre Dame as a recruiting site for student interns for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
Three Notre Dame students completed a pilot intensive Chinese language program at Fu Jen University in Taiwan during the summer 2007.
Chineses business opportunities were explored in July 2007 by a group of 130 Notre Dame EMBA students, North and South American executives and some guests traveling with Executive Education.(4)
Eight Notre Dame students through the Center for Social Concerns’ International Summer Service Learning Program participated in eight-week service-learning internships with nongovernmental organizations in Cambodia, Thailand, Calcutta and Chennai, India.(5)
Five students and three faculty members participated in the School of Architecture’s architecture study tour in China and Japan in summer 2007.
Associate Professor Lionel Jensen taught a pre-college course on contemporary China for high school students during the summer of 2007.
Campus Events
Gao Xingjian, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature, visits Notre Dame campus for “Between Homeland and Heartland” Conference, featuring a literary dialogue with Julia Alvarez, a scholarly panel, student drama performance, and film screening.
“Between Figurative and Abstract: Recent Paintings by Gao Xingjian” on display at the Snite Museum of Art September 1—November 11, 2007.
“Rarely Seen: Selections from the O'Grady Collection of 19th-Century Photographs of Asian Women” on exhibit in the Snite Museum of Art’s Milly and Fritz Kaeser Mestrovic Studio Gallery, September 2—October 14, 2007.
The Honorable Sung-Hwan Son, Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Chicago, and Consul Jung-Il Han, the cultural attaché, visited campus on September 10 to discuss the development of Korean Studies.
Sir John Bond, CEO of Vodaphone, presented the talk “China: A Perspective” on September 13, 2007. It was sponsored by the Mendoza College of Business, Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and the Center for Asian Studies.
Edward Suzuki, Principal, Edward Suzuki Associates Inc., Tokyo, Japan presented talk “Interface: Borrowing from Engawa” on September 24 as part of the School of Architecture’s 2007-2008 Toeniskoetter Family Lecture Series.
Recruitment
Thirty undergraduate students from Asia entered the Class of 2011.(6)
The Graduate School welcomed seventy-four new Master’s Degree and Doctoral students from Asia. The Law School welcomed three new LLM students from Asia (China, Philippines, Indonesia), and new arrivals in the Mendoza School of Business include twenty MBA and nine Master of Science Accountancy students from Asia.(7)
Asia Initiatives is thankful to the Kellogg Institute for International Studies for helping to produce and distribute this newsletter.
- Enrollment figures obtained online through insideND on September 24, 2007.
- Same as above.
- Figure provided by the Office of International Studies.
- Figure provided by Executive Education, Mendoza College of Business
- Figure provided by the Center for Social Concerns.
- Figures provided by ISSA. The number of students is based on the number of students who received student visas and may not include all students from Asia.
- Figures provided by the Graduate School, Law School, and Mendoza College of Business