Susan Russell

$1.4 million federal grant boosts
Center for Southeast Asian Studies

by Tom Parisi

The NIU Center for Southeast Asian Studies will expand its programs and outreach efforts thanks to a U.S. Department of Education grant of more than $1.4 million.

The Title VI grant represents a funding lift of 47 percent over a similar grant received in 2000. The grants are awarded every three years in support of efforts to increase the national capacity of trained specialists in world languages and cultures.

NIU received the largest federal grant of the seven National Resource Centers for Southeast Asian studies, located at such prestigious institutions as Cornell University, the University of Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley.

“The external reviewers and project officers at the U.S. Department of Education really praised all aspects of our program,” said Susan Russell, director of the NIU center. “They called it an absolute model for what an undergraduate National Resource Center can be in terms of curriculum development, language training and community outreach.”

NIU offers both a minor and a graduate concentration in Southeast Asian studies. Courses are offered in the region’s languages, literatures, anthropology, geography, history, religion, music, art history and government. NIU’s center has particular strengths in the study of Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.

The federal funding boost to NIU not only reflects well on the excellent work of the center’s staff and faculty but also underscores federal priorities in the post-Sept. 11 era.

“The government saw the need to increase the funding for international education and particularly for the study of the less commonly taught languages in order to create an adequate number of citizens to fill national and international needs,” Russell said.

“Southeast Asia isn’t an area of the world that most Americans are familiar with,” she added. “Few Americans would know, for example, that Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country and is home to the world’s largest Islamic population.”

Russell said the greater funding will allow the center to expand its efforts in numerous areas, including:

• Scholarship offerings. In addition to tuition waivers, graduate students pursuing foreign language and area studies can qualify to receive stipends of $14,000 for nine months of study.
• Online education. New features will be added to SEAsite (www.seasite.niu.edu), the multimedia Web site that offers a comprehensive set of interactive learning resources for studying Southeast Asian languages, literatures and cultures.
• Foreign language instruction. Khmer, the language of Cambodia, is being added to the list of Southeast Asian languages taught at NIU. Also, an innovative set of translation courses will be added at the advanced level for Thai, Indonesian and Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines.
• Curriculum development. Across the university, selected NIU faculty members will
  incorporate elements of Southeast Asian studies into their courses. Courses on comparative Islamic issues also will be added.
• Sponsorship of educational conferences and new publications. Upcoming events will include the first international Thai studies conference to be held in the United States, scheduled for the spring of 2005 at NIU.
• Library holdings. NIU has the fifth-largest collection of Southeast Asian books and journals in the United States, and the latest round of funding specifically targets acquisitions in the area of Islamic topics.
• Teacher training at the elementary, high school and community college levels. NIU sponsors lectures at schools in the region, and the university conducts training in Southeast Asian studies through weeklong teacher institutes held on campus. Also, NIU development grants are awarded to teachers who complete their training and develop online course modules, which are made available on the center’s Web site to teachers nationwide.

For more information on the NIU Center for Southeast Asian Studies, click here or visit http://www.niu.edu/cseas/.

8-18-03