Welcome from Mark Chiang, Director of ASAM

Welcome to a new academic year and to the second year of the Asian American Studies (ASAM) Program! It has been quite an eventful and successful first year for us, as you can see in this newsletter. When we began in August of 2010, I was the only faculty member. Very soon thereafter, though, we immediately grew with the addition of Kevin Kumashiro, who became the first full-time faculty appointment as Professor of Asian American Studies. And the latest announcement is that we just expanded again this summer with the addition of Anna Guevarra to our faculty. It has been a noteworthy year for them, as Kevin is now serving as President-Elect of the National Association for Multicultural Education and Anna’s book was given the Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award from the Race, Class and Gender Section of the American Sociological Association, to name just two of their accomplishments.

In September of 2010, we held our inaugural celebration to mark the beginning of the program. It was a festive event with student performances and featured Dwight McBride, then Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, whom we have to thank for greenlighting the program. Then the very next month we discovered that UIC had been awarded a 5 year, $1.86 million grant from the Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AANAPISI) program of the US Department of Education. A small group of faculty and staff worked feverishly over the previous summer to prepare the application and so we were elated to receive the grant. Ican only mention some of the activities that the AANAPISI grant is helping us to fund, such as the ASAM Lecture Series, Expo Grants that support undergraduate research and creative projects, Study Abroad courses and scholarships, and an expanded roster of courses.

The main event in the Lecture Series was Falling Petals, a performance piece that addresses issues of mental health and disability in Asian American communities. Staged for three nights in March, the performance proved to be a powerful and moving experience. It would not have been possible, though, without the efforts of Dr. Rooshey Hasnain, who will be joining the ASAM program this fall. Dr. Hasnain will, among other things, be helping us to develop courses that engage students with local Asian American community issues and organizations. We also welcome Sharon Lee, who has joined us as Visiting Institutional Data Researcher and who is working to gather more data on Asian American and Pacific Islander students at UIC.

And last, but certainly not least, I am extraordinarily pleased to announce our very first class of graduating ASAM minors: Frances Lauren Cedro, Anothai Kaekwaen, Edmar Viloria, and Rachel Kim. I’m sure that they will be the first among many and I hope that they, and all of you reading this newsletter, will continue to support the ASAM Program as we develop and grow over the coming years.

-- August 2011