Department of Education reaffirms Columbia University as a National Resource Center on East Asia

The Weatherhead East Asian Institute is pleased to announce that Columbia University has been awarded a four-year comprehensive East Asia National Resource Center (NRC) grant by the U.S. Department of Education Title VI Programs.

Under the comprehensive NRC grant, Columbia University receives nearly $2.5 million over the next four years to advance the quality and dissemination of knowledge about East Asia, to train experts on East Asia with the highest levels of language proficiency, to promote interdisciplinary collaborations on and with the region, and to provide local and national educational outreach. Annual funding of $290,387 will go toward expanding activities by East Asia units at Columbia, including the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, the CV Starr East Asian Library, and the Department of East Asian Languages and
Cultures, and additional annual funding of $328, 500 per year will go toward the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships (FLAS), administered by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

A new initiative by the NRC will be the Weatherhead East Asian Institute’s participation in the creation of the INTERACT Fellowships at Columbia University. INTERACT is a pioneering, joint program of the Institute, the Committee on Global Thought, the Harriman Institute, and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society that focuses on developing global studies in the undergraduate curriculum through a network of postdoctoral scholars focused on cross-regional, transregional, and interdisciplinary study. The Weatherhead East Asian Institute will offer one INTERACT Fellowship a year to an outstanding scholar of modern and contemporary East Asia with a demonstrated emphasis on global context and connections. INTERACT’s primary goal is to improve global literacy among Columbia students and equip them to be leaders in a globalizing world. These objectives will be met through innovative courses, participating in Institute programs and events and an annual educator workshop organized collaboratively by INTERACT Fellows.

The Institute’s INTERACT fellow for 2010–2011 is Dr. Reto Hofmann. Dr. Hofmann will work
closely throughout the year with other INTERACT Fellows from each of the participating units.

Since 1960 – the inception year of the program – the Dept. of Education has continued to renew Columbia’s designation as a National Resource Center on East Asia with every grant cycle. In the last cycle, Columbia’s NRC funds allowed for the development of disciplinary and language courses, research, and overseas opportunities relating to modern Tibet, Southeast Asia and in the longer term, Inner Asia; the development of a freshman general social science course on East Asia, outreach activities targeted at the undergraduate population and expansion of our summer research fellowship program
to encourage undergraduate study abroad; and the establishment of a Columbia center in China, now called the Columbia Global Center In East Asia – Beijing.

To learn more about the Columbia East Asian NRC, click here.