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Dear Colleagues,
In the beginning of the 2008 spring semester, let me
first express my wholehearted greetings to you all.
I believe we all feel relaxed and recharged in the
month-long winter break.
To our 34 years old institute, this coming semester
will be with many new challenges and new hopes. We
shall work together more then ever to bring the GIAS
to a new level of achievements. The main tasks
include:
1.
Conducting evaluation
of the GIAS.
This semester, we will officially kick off the
year-long “visitation, evaluation and assessment”
process. All faculty members and graduate students
will have to work as a team, with numerous
paper-works and meetings, to prove to external
evaluation team and to the Ministry of Education
that the GIAS is the proud, the few, and the best
institute for American studies in the country.
2. Engaging
curricula reform.
For quite a long period of time, we have not review
the structure of our curricula. To meet the
requirement of the school authority, and to improve
the competitiveness of our program as well as
graduates, I believe this is the right time to take
on the task. I intend to divide our curricula into 5
fields, i.e. 1) government & politics, 2) history,
3) society and culture, 4) economy & trade, 5)
foreign & security policies. Each field will be led
and reviewed by a full-time professor. I will first
consult faculty members before reporting to all of
you about this re-engineering plan and I hope the
process can be completed before the next school
year.
3.
Boosting recruitment of
new students.
In the past months, colleagues at the GIAS had
engaged in ten events in the efforts to attract more
students to apply to our program. I have been
particularly encouraged by the initiatives by Lisa
Tsai and quite a few students who share their
thoughts and spent their precious time to help
increasing the awareness of potential applicants. We
will continue such efforts in the next few weeks –
that will be the remaining windows of opportunity
before the application process begins.
The 2008 is a year of changes, and that is
particularly true for the GIAS. The
U.S.
will have her presidential elections. Not only the
campaign and election processes, the change of
government and a new relations between the U.S. and
the world will be the focal points of academia,
media, policy circles and of course our teaching and
learning. We will watch closely the presidential
election in the
U.S.
and present to our society the best knowledge we
have on those issues.
I wish you all have a productive and pleasant new
semester ahead. Let’s roll our sleeves and work now.
Sincerely,
Alexander Huang
Director
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