At the next Meeting of the Faculty, tentatively scheduled for Oct. 17, professors will vote on the approval of three Five College Certificate programs. One of these is the Asian/Pacific/American Certificate, which is particularly worthy of consideration: The call for APA studies at the College began in 1972 when a group of concerned students wrote a letter to the College which stated, "Provisions for the pursuit of Asian-American studies are inadequate. Conditions conducive to the expression of Asian and Asian-American perspectives do not exist within this educational institution."
Currently, the College remains the only institution in the Consortium to not recognize the certificate.
Previously, the lack of a tenure-track APA professor at the College has been cited as reason for not recognizing the certificate since the College would not be able to contribute to the Certificate. However, the College has not taken steps to hire tenure-track APA faculty. Instead, visiting professors have been teaching at the College, a practice that has continued since 1991. The continual rehiring of APA professors leads to overlapping classes year after year by different professors who have similar course offerings. A lack of an advisor results as well for students who may want to pursue theses or projects such as Special Topics courses that require an established student-faculty relationship.
APA courses taught by visiting professors in the American studies department are insufficient; only one or two professors are hired at any given time. Courses in the Asian languages and civilizations department specifically focus on Asian studies, which excludes Asian American studies.
With recent efforts to increase diversity at the College, this change in the student body must be reflected in the College's faculty and curriculum as well. However, this is not to say that only specific students would benefit from the APA Certificate; the number and diversity of students who study in the Black studies department show that race-related studies are not marginalized to specific groups of students. Along these lines, APA studies would not detract from other departments, but would rather present new insights into other fields of study such as history-fresh points of view that are sorely needed by a curriculum that often views subjects such as race relations through a black-white dichotomy.
To not recognize the Five College APA Certificate while not making provisions for APA studies at the College is to ignore students' needs.
We urge the faculty to approve the recognition of the Five College Asian/Pacific/American Certificate.