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Northeastern University Launches New Asian American Center
A Talk with AAC Director Andrew Shen
By Adam Smith, SAMPAN
BOSTON - Oct 7, 2005 - Northeastern University celebrated the
official kick-off of its new Asian American Center on September 29. The
center will develop programs to help students explore their ethnic and
social identities while also reaching out to non-Asians. So far, the
center has started a peer mentoring program for freshmen students, an
Asian American literature book club, and various Asian American affinity
groups.
To learn more about the center, the Sampan recently interviewed Andrew
Shen, its director.
Sampan: What is the function of the Asian American Center?
Our function is to complement some of the other cultural centers that
already exist, the African American Institute, the Latino Center, and
the International Student and Scholar Institute. I would describe the
center in three bullets: The first is to increase the visibility of the
Asian American Community and the Asian American Experience here at the
Northeastern. The second is to provide direct services to those who
identify as part of the Asian American Community. And third, and I think
this is very important to emphasize, (to promote) learning across all
sectors of the community -- to encourage not only learning of Asian
American issues by the entire community, but to encourage those in my
community, the Asian American community, to also become involved in the
programs of my fellow cultural centers.
Sampan: Discuss the last point about encouraging Asian Americans
to get involved in programs of other cultures.
Basically, if I run programs and 95% of the audience is always Asian
American, then I'm not doing my job correctly. The goal is to really
encourage sharing. (Also,) I think philosophically the reason we believe
in that is simply because the work of educating people of various
experiences can't be done fully unless people who don't identify with
the experience that we're experiencing are involved.
Sampan: Will people outside the university have access to the
center?
Obviously there are some programs that are geared specifically towards
Northeastern, but most of our large events, or when we bring speakers,
are always free and open to the public.
Sampan: Do you plan to collaborate with any area institutes?
Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense. Admittedly, since we're (new), we
haven't developed any consistent relationships (yet). Hopefully,
eventually we can co-host some activities together.
Sampan: Explain the center's peer mentoring program?
That's sort of our flagship for student programs right now. We recruited
12 upperclassmen, Asian American students, who have an interest in
providing mentoring to this year's freshmen. We had about 16 or 17
freshmen apply. It's a program that tries to assist freshmen not only in
regard to cultural identity in reflection to what it means to be an
Asian American in Northeastern, but also just things that everybody has
concerns about, such as student life, where to get the best deal on
detergent, how to deal with financial issues...
Sampan: Talk about the Asian American literature book club at the
center.
I have to first give credit to the University of Connecticut. They have
an Asian American center there and they have a book club, so I borrowed
their idea. The book club is open to all of Northeastern and we have
about 22 participants. It's a perfect example of our attempt to provide
services to not only Asian Americans but also to anybody who has an
interest in the issue. We pick four books a year and we meet once every
few weeks to discuss the book, and the goal is to bring the author of
each book, to campus and have a discussion. So the first book that we're
reading is “Asian American X” and the author is going to be coming in
November.
Sampan: Did the center look at other similar centers at other
universities when creating this?
Yeah, definitely. I think regionally, the people that we connected with
the most was the University of Connecticut, Tufts, Dartmouth, and Brown,
which doesn't have an Asian American center but it has some programs
that we wanted to replicate as it related to our work.
Sampan: How did the idea first come about?
It's interesting. In a lot of cases at other schools... their centers
came about because of unfortunate racial incidents and was often
student-initiated. Here, this was initiated by faculty and staff that
noticed the existence of other culture centers on campus and said to
themselves: 'well, we're one of the largest ethnic minority groups on
campus and we don't have a center that tries to give voice to our
experiences.' So, they interacted with the president (of the university)
over the course of four or five years and discussed the need and
importance of it. Then, last year, they decided to move forward.
Sampan: What are some of your goals for the center?
The good news is that we found a space to move into. The university just
purchased a small brownstone on Hemingway Street. In terms of
programming, some of our big goals are to provide a series of workshops
(and) to create a strong student base and constituency. We need to find
a way for our students to feel like we're advocating for them, and we're
worth their time and investment.
To learn more about
aaca.neu.edu
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