From the Chair (2003)
Dear alumni and friends,
I have an upbeat report for this year, with many positive events for the Department. Before giving the good news, though, I should address the University’s current budget crisis and its impact on Departmental programs. As you probably know, drastic drops in Colorado state revenue have resulted in major budget cuts for higher education state-wide, and in very substantial cuts for the Boulder campus. Every expenditure is being examined, but there was little "fat" in our budget to begin with, and these cuts are more likely to hit muscle and bone than expendable tissue.
We very much need the help of alumni, parents, and friends of the Department to maintain our programs. Your graduating daughter or son (or you, if you are one of our alums) benefited greatly from programs that enriched their educational experience in Chinese, Japanese, or Asian Studies. These include the language and speech contests, cultural events such as Chinese New Year, demonstrations of cultural practices like dance, tea ceremonies, calligraphy demonstrations, and flower arranging. Events and experiences such as these are critical features of learning in a language and civilization department, and we need your help to ensure that we will be able to offer future students the same level of participation that past students have enjoyed. As an incentive, I will personally match gifts received for these purposes between now and June 1, up to a total of $500.
Also very much appreciated would be gifts for undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships. Many of our students need scholarship assistance to continue their studies, particularly for study abroad experiences. Study abroad plays a key educational role in any language department, and ours is no exception. Graduate students benefit from the individualized training for which our Chinese and Japanese programs are famous and also need to be supported, if they are continue at the same high level as in the past.
Last June, too late for inclusion in the spring 2002 newsletter, we hired Chao Fang-yi as an Assistant Professor to fill a gap in Chinese Linguistics. Dr. Chao’s expertise is ancient Chinese linguistics; her dissertation was "On the Sound System of Qieyun: A Phonemic Interpretation." Dr. Chao received her B.A. from Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, her M.A. from Tunghai University, Taiwan, and her Ph.D. from Ohio State University. She has been busy this year doing an excellent job coordinating the Chinese language instruction program and developing graduate and undergraduate courses in linguistics.
This year we searched for a new faculty member to replace Howard Goldblatt, who retired at the end of the previous academic year. I am pleased to report that after reviewing several dozen applications and conducting five on-campus interviews, we have hired Lee Haiyan as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Lee holds a B.A. from Beijing University, an M.A. from the University of Chicago, and the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University, where she is now on an Andrew Mellon postdoctoral fellowship.
Her dissertation "In the Name of Love: Virtue, Identity and Structure of Feeling in Modern China" establishes her as an exceptionally promising young scholar in modern Chinese literature. She has also published a number of journal articles and book chapters. We very much look forward to her joining the faculty in the fall.
Also joining us next year are Hsu Chun-ling and Chen Mei-ying, both in the rank of Instructor; they will contribute to teaching the first three years of Chinese. Ms. Hsu and Ms. Chen bring a great deal of enthusiasm to their teaching, and we look forward to having them work with us.
Finally, we have been, for the first time, able to offer two years of beginning Korean. Cheol Lee, a doctoral candidate in linguistics here at CU, has very ably taken on Korean instruction. A federal grant has supported Mr. Lee’s salary, and we are now striving to cement Korean as our third language by obtaining permanent funding for an Instructorship in Korean.
We look forward to the coming year with considerable optimism. While we face budgetary challenges, we have added in very positive ways to our already outstanding faculty, and we are confident that we will be able to deliver a program whose quality matches that of any University in the country.
Michael Breed