After 12 years of students pushing for an Asian and Asian American Studies Program at Syracuse University, the committee behind the minor has its official proposal.

The group will meet April 21 – the day of SU Showcase and MayFest – for a meeting and reception for its proposal. The first draft of the proposal for the minor, formerly called the Transnational Asian Studies Program, was written at the end of January.

At this point, the main obstacle facing the minor is a lack of funding and the university’s tight budget right now, said Susan Wadley, dean of curriculum for the College of Arts and Sciences. For this reason, she said, it will be hard to hire professors to teach new courses.

‘We’re at a time when there are no financial resources,’ Wadley said. ‘We’ve been cobbling together resources and shifting budgets and shifting monies.’

Andrea Wangsanata, student chair of the Minor Proposal Committee, said she hopes to use April, which is Asian Pacific American month, to promote the program. The committee will have a table to inform people who don’t know about the program at an event called Korean Night Sunday. But Wangsanata said one of the problems she sees is a heavy focus on Asian, as opposed to Asian-American, classes.

‘When I look at the list, it’s like Asian, Asian, Asian, Asian, Asian-American,’ said Wangsanata, a sophomore public relations and political science major. ‘It’s not their fault, just because there’s no one to teach the Asian-American side of it. I feel like that’s something we should really push. That should be our main agenda.’

The new minor will be proposed in October to the Arts and Sciences curriculum committee. If approved there, the proposal will move to the University Senate curriculum committee for approval and then to the entire senate for a final vote. Wadley said the only thing that could prevent the program’s passage is if committee members find the proposal has an insufficient number of courses for students to complete the minor.

The minor will require students to take 18 credits in Asian and Asian-American courses, said Prema Kurien, the interim chair of the proposal committee. This includes one introductory course, one course on contemporary Asian-American culture, and one on ethnicity, migration or race.

Kurien said the minor is finally moving forward after 12 years of students pushing for it because faculty became involved, starting in December 2007. ‘Until then, it was entirely a student- and staff-led effort,’ Kurien said. ‘Even the title was something that students came up with. Now faculty got involved, and now it’s moving.’

Kurien said this semester, only four students signed up for the minor’s pilot introductory course, CAS 200: Transnational Asian Studies. It will be offered again next semester and will be publicized, along with the whole minor, to try to get more students interested.

‘If, in the end, it turns out that students are not signing up, this won’t move forward.’

Carina Lui, a 2008 alumna who worked to get the program created while she was here, said that even though the minor will be proposed in the fall, she is not yet ready to claim victory because she’s seen the proposal halted before.

Lui said her ultimate goal would be to have the program expand outside of the classroom.

‘Not only are we talking about courses or professors, but also the support network, the programs that come along with that, and an academic as well as a culture level,’ Lui said. ‘That would be my overall dream. This (minor) is a pretty good first step.’

rhkheel@syr.edu

Published on April 1, 2009 at 12:00 pm