Bulletin No. 2, 2013

8 Chinese University Bulletin No. 2, 2013 IASP and OAL I n 1977, t he I nte r nat i ona l A s ian Stud i e s Programme (IASP) was launched in cooperation with the Yale-China-Association for visiting students from overseas. This was in response to increased interest in East Asia and the requests by foreign students for study opportunities in a Chinese environment which mainland China and Taiwan were not able to provide. A curriculum, primarily courses on modern China, taught in English, was developed for visiting undergraduate students. Graduate students in Chinese Studies were also welcomed to the programme. The IASP programme took on the overall administrative responsibility for all foreign students engaged in Asian Studies at CUHK and an office was set up for this purpose. In the mid-1980s, universities with the most IASP participants included the University of California, Harvard University, Grinnell College, University of Texas, Yale University and Macalester College in the US, and Soka University and Osaka University of Foreign Studies in Japan. ‘I think that the best way to learn about your own culture is to leave it and study another for a while,’ said Catherine Ventura Condon (left), a 1982–83 exchange student from Virginia Commonwealth University. David Condon , Jr. (right) who came to CUHK from the University of Minnesota the same year, married Catherine after returning to the United States Some IASP participants are American-born-Chinese who came to Hong Kong to seek their ‘roots’. Sylvia Kwan , a computer science junior from Brown University, said: ‘I came here also for cultural reasons. Being Chinese, I want to speak Chinese. I feel like a Chinese but I don’t know much about Chinese culture.’ Lisa Jacobson , a junior from Georgetown University, served the community of Hong Kong by teaching English to Vietnamese refugee children