Centre News

Previous students have enjoyed studying abroad in East Asia,
and many travel to Vietnam and Cambodia (where Sarah Cao ’12
captured the photo above this past January) for the three-week
CentreTerm.

The grant will help strengthen the College’s already outstanding
global citizenship initiatives. Centre’s commitment to global
citizenship can be seen by the flags both inside and outside of the
Campus Center, which represent the countries where Centre
students study abroad and the home countries of the College’s
international students.

Centre College has just received a $250,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support East Asian Studies. The grant will support the first two years of a faculty tenure-track position in East Asian Studies; faculty/student collaborative research or faculty research in Asia, including work to establish student internships in Asia; and the development of new courses related to East Asian Studies. The new tenure-track position will strengthen the breadth and depth of the College’s faculty in East Asian Studies, and the related initiatives will provide exciting opportunities to stimulate faculty and student exploration of East Asian Studies.

“This grant will provide some real momentum in strengthening our curriculum in the area of East Asian Studies,” says Dr. Stephanie Fabritius, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the College. “It will add an exciting new dimension to our course offerings, our opportunities for scholarship and internships and the development of new CentreTerm courses focusing on and traveling to Asia.”

(During CentreTerm, the College’s three-week January term, Centre professors lead study abroad trips around the world, often including trips to Vietnam, India, New Zealand and the Bahamas, to name just a few.)

Centre was one of a select group of colleges that the Mellon Foundation invited to apply for a grant in recognition of their presidential leadership.

Through a 2009 grant, the Mellon Foundation is also supporting the development of a minor in East Asian Studies at Centre, as well as other initiatives related to global studies. The 2009 grant is being used to establish a Mellon Global Fellows program, a three-year initiative that will establish five faculty “learning circles” whose goal will be to create successful academic minors—one of which is East Asian Studies—in areas related to global citizenship.