BOULDER, Colo. — The University of Colorado Boulder is using a new grant to help students learn more about Asian culture.
The university was awarded $2.2 million in grants for its Center for Asian Studies.
The hope is that this funding will help immerse students in study abroad programs, international internships, and language studies.
“One of the missions is to make Asia as accessible as possible for as many people on campus and in our broader community as we can," said Tim Oakes, interim faculty director at the Center for Asian Studies. "That’s from expanding Asian studies in the curriculum here at CU Boulder, making study abroad opportunities available to a wider variety of students especially students who don’t have the financial resources to otherwise study abroad.”
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The $2.2 million dollars will be used to support the Center for Asian Studies' role as a National Resource Center. Among other things, it will also be used to fund Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships for five graduate students.
“We’ve always felt that knowing the language is a critical foundation to building knowledge about a place," said Oakes. “Study abroad, language studies, really help build that in a way that helps people overcome initial suspicions, initial fears.”
Executive director at the Center for Asian Studies Danielle Rocheleau Salaz said the funding will also help expand CU Boulder's course offerings related to Asia. She said the theme for the grant is, 'infusing Asia across campus.'
"We can all be a little bit less fearful and a little bit more open," said Rocheleau Salaz, executive director at the Center for Asian Studies. “We want the students to feel like they don’t have to fear difference. What we hear on the news on a sort of daily basis is, ‘They’re after us. Here are all the things we should be afraid of,’ and we want to break down some of those barriers and say ‘We have more in common, than we have differences.’”
The funding comes at a time when educators say international studies are needed most.
"We have been in a era of what I think of as nativist populism for a while now," Oakes said. "That is a sense of the political rhetoric we’ve heard about American-first, a very competitive orientation toward the rest of the world. I think that attitude is dangerous given the inextricable ways that we are connected to the world.”
Oakes said learning about other cultures is very different than learning from other cultures.
"One of the things I tell my students is that we all live in Asia," he said. "The products that we use. The things that we do in our daily lives. Those all connect us to Asia in fundamental ways and don't we have some kind of responsibility to know a little bit more about that kind of place that we're so intimately connected to in so many ways? I think we do. Most of the time when you have those kinds of suspicions and fears, they come out of ignorance, right? They come out of not really knowing about another place, not really having experience in any kind of meaningful way."
Rocheleau Salaz said international connections are important and it's crucial we learn to work together to solve problems that affect us all.
“What we want is for people to meet each other where they’re at," said Rocheleau Salaz. "Learn about each other, not be intimated by difference, not be fearful of what they don’t know but willing to be vulnerable and to learn and to ask questions."
- Instruction of Arabic culture and civilization in the Asian Languages and Civilizations Department;
- Tibetan language learning in the Anderson Language Technology Center;
- Collaboration with the College of Engineering to develop an innovative “Climate and Society in Asia” curriculum;
- Curricular partnerships with Metropolitan State University of Denver and with CU Denver’s Institute for International Business;
- Professional development seminars and programs for K-12 educators; and
- Curricular development grants for faculty to expand Asia-related teaching throughout the university.
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