Bridging the Big Twelve: The Committee on Institutional Cooperation Asian American Studies Consortium

I don’t have any additional budget for Asian American studies programming or curriculum development; there is a running joke among my colleagues that the Asian American studies program is just me and my Xerox machine.

Administration is quick to come to Asian American studies when there is a public relations problem, but we don’t hear from them with much else.

Diversity at my institution means African American and Latino, not Asian American.

We don’t have a formal Asian American studies program to speak of; our cultural center tries to do some academic programming and initiatives, but there are no faculty.

I am the only faculty member who is working on behalf of Asian American studies, and my line isn’t even dedicated to Asian American studies. So what I do is on top of my regular research, teaching, and service responsibilities to my home department.

On February 3, 2006, the University of Minnesota, in collaboration with the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), hosted a gathering of thirty-three representatives from Asian American studies departments, programs, and advising/student services units at the Big Ten Center in Chicago.¹ What was shared at that meeting, as these thoughts reveal, highlights how the challenges of working in Asian American studies continue to be institutional as well as intellectual. These discussions resulted not only in some necessary venting of frustrations, however, but in something much more positive. In examining our shared interests in program building, teaching, and research in Asian American studies, our group also embarked upon a more formal collaboration, the CIC Asian American Studies Consortium (CIC-AASC).

This article describes how interinstitutional collaboration, such as that encouraged through the CIC-AASC, might directly address some of the challenges of building Asian American studies programs today. These challenges are not unique to CIC universities or to schools located in the Midwest; rather, they are familiar to many who are trying to grow Asian American studies programs with limited resources. As such, the CIC-AASC might serve as a useful model for professional and institutional collaboration that can help further the field as a whole.

First founded in 1957 by the presidents of the Big Ten, the CIC now comprises twelve research universities at thirteen campuses: the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign and Chicago campuses), Indiana University, the University of Iowa, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, the University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. CIC projects have been organized in multiple areas of research, administration, libraries, international study, and technology, and the CIC-AASC was directly inspired by earlier collaborations such as the CIC American Indian Studies Consortium.

A CIC collaboration in Asian American studies seems particularly timely, given the strong interest in Asian American studies overall. Undergraduate teaching in Asian American studies at many CIC institutions has grown steadily in the past decade. There are currently undergraduate minors, certificate programs, or other undergraduate degrees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, the University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and new minors have been proposed at several other schools. Although no independent graduate degree programs have as yet been established at any of the CIC institutions, interest in Asian American studies among graduate students is high, and Asian American studies faculty have played a crucial role in training the next generation of scholars and teachers to work in a variety of fields. Faculty, staff, and students at many CIC-affiliated institutions have garnered awards, fellowships, and other honors, and the success of these individual Asian American studies departments, programs, and faculty has been instrumental in changing larger perceptions about Asian American studies as a “California-centric” field.

These successes, however, accompany concerns about how Asian American studies can continue to grow and thrive at these universities, particularly in a climate of financial cutbacks. Asian American studies in the CIC faces challenges similar to those...