Everything East Asian
By Paul Grondahl

Susannah Fessler, chair of the Department of East Asian Studies, with Graeme Freeman, executive director of the Freeman Foundation.

With 73 majors, the University’s Department of East Asian Studies has doubled in size in the past eight years and now offers substantial scholarships, study-abroad stipends and a summer seminar in East Asia. Much of this transformation is thanks to a four-year, $1.99 million grant from the Freeman Foundation and its undergraduate Asian Studies funding initiative.

“There’s no way we could have done this without them,” said Susanna Fessler, chair of the Department of East Asian Studies. The University’s program is the only East Asian Studies department in the State University of New York system, and UAlbany is one of just a few public universities with undergraduate programs of comparable size and scope in the nation.

The Freeman funding provides $60,000 per year for domestic scholarships. The foundation is also supporting study in Japan, China and Korea with $60,000 per year in study-abroad scholarships. The initiative also supports a summer seminar in East Asia for 14 students, a computer lab with software in the Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages; and the development of new upper-level courses on topics such as East Asian travel literature, medieval China, Chinese painting and Buddhist texts.

“Although language courses are the bread and butter of what we do, we strive to graduate students who are culturally literate, and who can show up in the airport in Beijing and have the skills to do well,” Fessler said. “Our curriculum also provides a grounding in both the historic and contemporary cultures of China, Japan and Korea.”

The Freeman Foundation was created by Houghton Freeman, whose father, Mansfield Freeman, helped found American International Group (AIG), a worldwide insurer. Houghton Freeman was born in China in 1921 and moved from Shanghai to Tokyo in 1949. He started a philanthropic foundation in 1992 to foster greater American appreciation for and understanding of East Asia.

Fessler said the East Asian Studies program is well positioned for continued success and growth with past and present private support from several additional philanthropic organizations, including the Starr Foundation, Japan Foundation, Korea Foundation, Luce Foundation and Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation.

“It’s very exciting to be working with such tremendous support and it’s a thrilling time to be in this department and the Albany area,” Fessler said. She noted that there is keen anticipation of the imminent arrival of Tokyo Electron Ltd., which will locate a research facility at the University’s nanotechnology campus. Tokyo Electron makes the tools needed for computer chip manufacturing, and expects to employ about 300 individuals, including some relocated from Tokyo.

Fessler has been in contact with Tokyo Electron’s human resources department in Texas and is discussing the possibility of internships. She would like to place several of her Japanese language students with incoming Japanese employees to help smooth their transition to life in the Albany area. “Students eager to use their Japanese would be a good match for employees who will need help getting settled,” Fessler said.

Fessler, who speaks Japanese and Chinese, said student interest in the various regions of East Asia rises and falls, depending on the political situation. There is intense interest in Korea at the moment, but Japan and China are also popular. “It’s hard to predict what attracts students, but Japanese is extremely popular right now,” said Fessler, who has 100 students studying first-year Japanese.

Fessler said the U.S. State Department ranks Japanese and Chinese in the category of the “most difficult” languages in the world. It takes four times as long for a native English speaker to reach fluency in Japanese and Chinese as in the Romance languages. “Studying for four years as an undergraduate allows a student to reach a very good level of facility,” Fessler said. “ Although fluency takes work beyond that, our students are well-prepared for whatever direction they decide to take after graduation, from graduate school to working in the travel industry or for Asian corporations with branches in the U.S.”

For more imformation, please contact Carol Bullard in the Office of Corporate and Foundation Relations at 518-437-4976.

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