Teaching About Asia

The Summer 2007 Teaching about Asia Seminar will be held on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University next week (16-21 July) under the auspices of IU's East Asian Studies Center.

Participants will be Social Studies and Humanities Teachers for grades 6-12. The instructor is Paul B. Watt, Ph.D., Professor of Asian Studies and Chair, DePauw University.

The East Asian Studies Center of Indiana University, with the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia, is engaged in a national multi-year program to improve the teaching of East Asia in America's schools.

The East Asian Studies Center assists in the coordination of teaching, research, and outreach activities on East Asia. Established in 1979, EASC links the expertise of I.U.'s East Asian area specialists to the local and national needs of business, education, and government.

Learning How to Teach Chinese

The Chinese Pedagogy Institute opened Sunday. Sponsored by Indiana University in Bloomington and its East Asian Studies Center, the two-week intensive course is all about teaching Mandarin Chinese at the secondary level.

Fifteen prospective and practicing high school teachers of Chinese are enrolled this year. Jennifer Liu, East Asian languages and cultures professor, and Chinese language coordinator at IU, is leading the course.

IU was one of 34 institutions awarded a grant by the National Security Language Initiative's STARTALK, a federal program aimed at increasing the number of Americans learning critical need languages such as Chinese and Arabic.