Daily Archives: November 15, 2017

People

People

Yu Zhou, Director of LIASE 2017-2018

Professor of Geography, Vassar College

Yu Zhou received Bachelor and Master’s degree from Department of Regional and Environmental Sciences (formerly Geography) in Peking University, China, and received Ph.D. in geography from University of Minnesota in 1995.  Her current research is on globalization and high-tech industry in China.  More recently she has done researched into China’s green building program and urban sustainability.  In the United States, her works are more in the areas of ethnic business, gender and ethnic communities, and transnational business networks.  In 2008, she was selected as one of the twenty Public Intellectual Fellows by the National Committee on US-China Relations. She has been interviewed by New York Times, and Washington Post, Voice of America among others.

Fubing Su

Professor of Political Science, Vassar College

Fubing Su received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. Before joining Vassar College, he taught at Brown University for two years. He is also a member of the Asian Studies program. Fubing Su’s teaching interests include comparative politics, political economy, East Asian security, and Chinese politics. His research concerns contemporary Chinese political and economic developments, including electoral politics, village governance, local public finance, urbanization, land management, transition, and China’s growth model.

Kathleen M. Panebianco

Chinese and Japanese Department Administrative Assistant, Vassar College

Boyu Guo

Vassar Liase Student Assistant, Vassar College

Student Conferences on Asia and Environment

Conference

Bi-annual Conference on Asia and the Environment

Research Conference on Asia and Environment on a biannual basis.   Bard College has been hosting this conference between 2014 and 2017. Vassar will host the conference in 2019 and 2021.   The conference is oriented to present and discuss undergraduate or graduate student research on Asia.  We encourage paper, and poster sessions, individual and team presentations.  The detail conference guideline and call-for-paper will be issued in the fall of 2018 and 2020.   The conference will provide a paper prize for exceptional student research papers presented at the conference.

Environmental Exchange conference with Ochanomizu University

Vassar will hold an environmental exchange conference at Vassar with Ochanomizu University of Tokyo in 2019.

Vassar’s Japanese Program has maintained an established academic partnership with Ochanomizu and Ritsumeikan Universities since 2006. Each year since 2012, the first anniversary of the disastrous North Japan Earthquake, Ochanomizu University invites two students from Vassar to participate in a student peace-building forum in March. In March 2014, Vassar hosted the visit of fourteen Ochanomizu students and two faculty members at Vassar and held a student forum called “Overcoming 3.11.” (Their costs of travel and lodging were covered by the Japanese government.) Presentations by students were conducted in both Japanese and English, but the highlight of the week-long event was the 3.11 memorial ceremony in which the Ochanomizu students talked about their experience of the tsunami. This event attracted many students, including those who had never taken Asian language or Asian Studies courses.

Curricular Development

Curriculum Development

The LIASE funds earmarked for faculty support intend to encourage the development of new and revised courses in humanities and social sciences to address East Asia and/or Southeast Asia environmental content.

2019-2020 Academic Year

2017-2018 Academic Year

Faculty members who want to add/revise a course module on environmental related issues in East Asia and Southeast Asia in existing courses, or you want to create a new course on this region with strong environmental content, you can apply for LIASE.  The total budget for each year is $5,000 and will be for four years including 2017-18.

Budget guideline:

Faculty stipends

1) Creation of an entirely new course with East Asia and Environmental content, $1,000/per course, if co-taught total $1,500.

2) Creation of a new module or revisions to an existing course by adding East Asia and Environmental content, $500/per course. If the course module is co-taught, the total stipend will be $750.

Student assistance:

Participating faculty can request hiring of undergraduate student assistants.  Students will be paid hourly at the College standard rates and limits.  The proposal should estimate the hours needed for the student work and total budget should not exceed $600/per course, but the faculty is encouraged to combine related courses.

Research expenses

The grant may also reimburse research expenses within $250/course (receipts/invoices required).

Travel:

While the grant does not support general travel expenses, we encourage faculty to seek travel support elsewhere.  In exceptional circumstances, travel allowance up to $500 can be approved on a case-by-case basis pending availability of funds.

Proposal structure:

A brief proposal of 2-3 pages, including:

  • description of the course or course module,
  • curriculum impact in the department/program/college, and whether it fills a particular gap.
  • estimated enrollment, and any prerequisites for this course, and when and how frequent this course will be taught.
  • a list of the course proposing you have recently taught.
  • budget and timeline corresponding to the guidelines above.

Grant deadlines:

Faculty members can submit course proposals on two deadlines, one in the Fall after the Fall Break (10/16 in 2017) and one in the Spring after the Spring Break(3/26 2018).

Grant administration

Proposals should be sent to Yu Zhou, director of LIASE grant (yuzhou@vassar.edu).  An ad hoc committee made up of the directors of LIASE, Asian Studies and the chair of Chinese and Japanese will review the proposals to make decisions on funding based on the proposal.  If you have any questions, please direct them to Yu Zhou.

Obligations of the grantees

At the end of the funding period, participating faculty members will provide a narrative report of the new course/course module including the syllabi, readings, exercises or other student evaluating activities.  Faculty members agree to share this material with others who have received LIASE support, and possibly with the larger academic community, including other institutions that have received LIASE grants from the Henry Luce Foundation.  Participating faculty members are expected to participate in at least one of the LIASE-sponsored curriculum seminars that will be held in the summer to share their work with other faculty members.

Annual Curriculum Workshop

 

About LIASE VASSAR

About

About LIASE

Funded by the Henry Luce Foundation’s Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment (LIASE) with supplemental support from the College, Vassar College’s LIASE program organizes a series of activities to promote the understanding of Asia in environmental studies. This includes annual summer research in China for collaboration between Chinese and American environmental scientists and students; summer language scholarship to encourage science students to learn Chinese; curriculum workshops to infuse Asian and environmental content into existing science, social science, and humanity courses and new course development; student conferences featuring their work; visits of Chinese scholars to Vassar; and more. The grant period is from Sept. 2017-Sept. 2021.

Director: Yu Zhou, professor of Geography and Asian Studies 2018-2019, yuzhou@vassar.edu

Administrative assistant: Kathleen Panebianco, kapanebianco@vassar.edu

Student intern: Boyu Guo (Art History), 2018-19.

Vassar LIASE documentary 2016 (click to watch video)

Asian Studies at Vassar

The Asian Studies Program at Vassar is one of the College’s first multidisciplinary programs.  Established in 1965 with six participating members, it has grown into a vibrant program with a distinguished faculty of twenty-two specialists from twelve departments. The program provides a rich curriculum for students to study both the traditional societies and cultures of Asia and their transformations in recent times. It also plays a vital role in infusing the study of Asia across Vassar’s curriculum.

Please visit https://asianstudies.vassar.edu/ for more information.

Environmental Studies at Vassar

The Environmental Studies (ENST) major is designed around the guiding principle that, at a liberal arts college, the study of the environment should involve all areas of the curriculum. At the same time, we believe that such a major develops best from a deep knowledge of individual disciplines.  ENST majors have their disciplinary homes all over the campus, for any Vassar department, from Biology to Art, may provide a concentration. Knowledge of the natural sciences and their methods is an important part of any study of the environment, therefore all ENST majors reach at least the intermediate level in Biology, Chemistry, or Earth Science. This perspective is then complemented by a disciplinary focus in either the arts and humanities or the social sciences. When ENST students come together in the program’s own multidisciplinary courses, they share their diverse disciplinary perspectives and, at the same time, learn how their different forms of knowledge gather around the field of environmental studies.

Please visit https://environmentalstudies.vassar.edu/ for more information.

Partner Organizations in LIASE

Partners

School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences, East China Normal University 

The School of Ecological and Environmental Science (SEES) is one of the best research and educational institutions of ecology and environmental science in China. It currently boasts 45 faculty members, including eighteen professors, twenty associate professors and seven assistant professors, and seventeen staff members. About one-third of the faculty have been elected in national- or provincial-level programs for outstanding scholars in China.

Please visit http://english.ecnu.edu.cn/ and http://www.sees.ecnu.edu.cn/index.php?classid=7267 for more information.

College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Central China Normal University

The College of Urban and Environmental Sciences (CUES) has a rich offering of academic programs, including four undergraduate programs, seven postgraduate majors, two doctoral programs, and several supporting institutions for academic research and teaching. Currently, the CUES has about 80 staff members, including 16 professors (nine of them are doctoral supervisors) and 16 associate professors. It also employs seven part-time professors from both domestic and foreign universities, including two academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. CUES teachers all hold doctoral degrees and are fully active in research and teaching. The current student enrollment in CUES is about 800 undergraduates, more than 400 postgraduate students and more than 30 doctoral students.

Please visit http://english.ccnu.edu.cn/ and http://english.ccnu.edu.cn/info/1013/1147.htm for more information.

School of Life Sciences, Central China Normal University

The School of Life Sciences is a nationally and internationally recognized teaching and research base with highly qualified teachers and reputable researchers. Biology at CCNU has been named as a key discipline in Hubei province. The school has a center for postdoctoral training, a Hubei key laboratory for genetic regulation and integrated biology, and a Ministry of Education key laboratory for pesticide and chemical biology.  In the past three decades, significant progress has been made on teaching and research in the fields of botany, zoology, microbiology, genetics and developmental biology, high school biology education and textbook reform.

Please visit http://english.ccnu.edu.cn/ and http://english.ccnu.edu.cn/info/1013/1146.htm for more information.

Summer Scholarships for Environmental Studies Students to Learn Chinese Languages

Language Scholarship

The Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment (LIASE) Fellowship will offer financial support for students who have strong interests in the environment to pursue Chinese language study in the summer of 2024. Students will apply through the Ann Cornelisen Fellowship for Undergraduate Students. Open to first-years, sophomores and juniors.

Click here for the link to fellowship page: Vassar Office of Fellowship

Summer Intensive Field Workshops in China

Summer Field Workshops

Introduction

This summer field workshop, a key activity for our LIASE Implementation project, is designed to establish an institutional structure that brings together American and Chinese faculty and students representing a variety of disciplines in confronting major environmental problems. This initiative stems from the common teaching/research experiences at Vassar and our partner universities. For example, Vassar College has organized multidisciplinary studies of a local waterway, the Casperkill, where environmental scientists from Chemistry, Biology, and Geography have worked with students in ongoing, a joint study of water quality and related matters. Both ECNU and CCNU have a tradition of intensive field study summer sessions, during which students and faculty work together to examine environmental or social problems from a multidisciplinary perspective. These workshops draw on preexisting experience and structures, but enhance both by adding the dimension of international collaboration.

-Summer 2018: Water and City @ ECNU, Shanghai

-Summer 2019: Land and Agriculture @ ECNU, Shanghai

program paused due to the covid

-Summer 2023: Agriculture and Environment @NTU and NPUST, Taiwan

The Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment at Vassar College

About

The considerable environmental challenges China faces and the myriad opportunities these present, in tandem with Vassar’s existing research-related and administrative connections with two Chinese universities—Central China Normal University in Wuhan (CCNU) and East China Normal University (ECNU) in Shanghai—galvanize our commitment to a China-centric LIASE program.  We will deepen our collaboration with ECNU and CCNU through annual intensive summer field workshops and in hosting on our campus visiting faculty and post-doctorates from these two institutions.  Through this collaboration, we will enhance the engagement of our faculty and students with China and provide infrastructure and networking opportunities for scholars from our partner institutions and other LIASE grantee colleges. We will promote curricular innovation by injecting China-related subjects into our Environmental Studies courses and providing incentives for Asian Studies and language courses to increase their environmental content.   Ultimately, this will inform the Asian Studies program’s collaboration with the Environmental Studies program to establish at Vassar an Asian Sustainability correlate sequence (minor)—and with it, a lasting new facet of the Vassar curriculum catalyzed by LIASE.