ASDP/ARC PROFILE
ECKERD COLLEGE
Institution Name:
Eckerd College
4200 54th Avenue South
St. Petersburg, FL 33711Contact(s):
Andrew Chittick
Assistant Professor of East Asian Humanities
727-864-8458, chittiab@eckerd.eduBrief Institutional Description: Eckerd is a private liberal arts college affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, located on 267 acres of oceanfront property in west central Florida. We currently have approximately 100 faculty and 1600 students. We offer a comprehensive undergraduate education in the arts, humanities, social and natural sciences, with particularly strong programs in marine science, international relations, and international business and management.
Asian/International Stage of Development: Eckerd has been aggressively building its Asian studies curriculum for over ten years now. We initially sought to equip representative faculty across the disciplines with a greater understanding of selected Asian cultures, specific knowledge of Asia-related issues in the faculty members' disciplines, and direct experience in Asia. We began by winning three successive grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities for institutional planning and faculty development during 1989-93. We also began active membership in the ASDP and in ASIANetwork, a consortium of small colleges with developing Asian Studies programs. Individual faculty went on to win funding for faculty development and study abroad in Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia. We completely revised the curriculum for our required first-year humanities sequence in 1995-96 so that Asian classics are read in conjunction with western classics, and students do comparative research in east/west themes. As support among the faculty grew, we added "interest in Asian cultures and issues" as a positive factor in faculty searches, and thereby added faculty in Asian politics and Asian art, both of whom are natives of China and provide a rich additional resource on our campus. We matched an NEH Challenge grant in 1997-98 and hired an East Asian endowed chair to coordinate and lead our program forward. With further help from the Luce Foundation in 1999, we have added a professor in Chinese Language and Literature. We now have instituted a formal major and minor in East Asian studies and offer approximately two dozen courses in Asian Studies, as well as Chinese and Japanese language instruction and a diverse array of study abroad opportunities.
Recent/Planned Activities: Our activites calendar is coordinated by our Asia Resources Committee. Over the last two years we have sponsored Lucien Pye (Chinese political culture), the Venerable Tenzin Yignyen (Namgyai Monastery), James Sasser (former ambassador to China), Peter Hershock (Buddhism), and a group of Tibetan monks who performed the making of a sand mandala.
Primary Faculty Resources: Andrew Chittick, Coordinator of East Asian Studies (Chinese and Japanese history, philosophy, and culture); Constantina Bailly, Religious Studies (Eastern religions, Buddhism); Linda Carroll, Modern Languages (Chinese and Japanese language); James Goetsch, Philosophy (Eastern thought); Ed Grasso, Decision Sciences (Winter Term in China); Sandra Harris, Human Development (Japanese families and society); Shiping Hua, Political Science (East Asian politics); George Meese, Writing/Rhetoric (Eastern aesthetics); Hal Serrie, Anthropology/International Business (Chinese society, business culture); Jing Shen, Chinese Language and Literature (Chinese fiction); Claire Stiles, Human Development (traditional Chinese medicine and healing arts); Donna Trent, Sociology (Winter Term in China); Kirk Wang, Visual Arts (Chinese calligraphy and painting)
Study Abroad and Faculty Exchange Programs: About 60% of our students go abroad during their four years at Eckerd, mostly to our house in London or on a four-week tour during our January term. We have semester exchange programs with two universities in Japan, one in Korea, and one in Hong Kong, as well as regular January-term offerings in Asia. We are initiating a new semester-long program in Asia in Spring 2002 with the support of the Freeman Foundation. Our most recent formal faculty exchanges were in summer 1999 when we sent professors to Sri Lanka (together with an honors anthropology student), Southeast Asia, and on the Freeman College in Asia program in Japan, Taiwan, and China (together with our Dean of Faculty). Two more of our faculty are doing summer research in China this year.
Recent Grants: We have most recently received grants in 1999 from the Luce Foundation (to hire a tenure-track professor of Chinese Language and Literature) and the Freeman Foundation (to build resources for our semester Study-in-Asia program).