In a victory for students at Hunter College in New York City, the U.S. Department of Education granted $1.7 million toward its Asian American Studies Program (AASP) Thursday.
The five-year, Title III grant will allow the program – for which students have long rallied in support of an AASP major – to bring in an Asian Pacific American mental health educator, develop integrated ESL and AAS courses and design an internship program for students enrolled in the existing AASP minor.
John Chin, a professor of urban planning at Hunter, said the grant would allow the program to support students who “may be the first to attend college or experience language and cultural barriers” and “don’t think of themselves as ‘college material.’”
Still, students – like Kevin Park, a member of the Coalition for the Revitalization of Asian American Studies at Hunter (CRAASH), a student-driven organization dedicated to the growth of the program – remain concerned about issues outside the scope of the grant, including the implementation of an AASP major, a tenure track for Program Director Jennifer Hayashida and more full-time faculty.
Students and faculty came together to launch the AASP in 1993 at Hunter. The college, which has a student population comprising 30 percent of Asian heritage, offers the largest offering of Asian American Studies courses in the city.
CRAASH launched a hashtag, #WhyINeedAAS, and wrote an open letter earlier this month detailing the instability facing the program.
“I am thrilled for what the [grant] will mean for the AASP and that the program is being recognized from other institutions,” Park said. “However, I know that the Hunter administration must do the work of addressing the structural issues that the grant cannot address, particularly the need for full-time faculty and a sustainable directorship line.”
