UCLA Department of Asian Languages and Cultures

ALC: 8-year Self Review
The Department offers an extremely broad range of undergraduate courses, including not only the
languages of Asia but also courses in such specialized fields as archaeology, cultural studies, film,
folklore, history, linguistics, literature, philosophy, and religion. These course offerings not only reflect
the expertise and interests of our faculty, but also respond to the needs of UCLA’s diverse student body,
over 40% of which is made up of students of Asian ethnicity. Much of the demand for our courses has
traditionally come from students seeking to explore their ethnic “roots”, but in recent years we have
experienced substantial growth in the number of non-ethnic Asian students in our courses as the
undergraduate population at large has come to recognize the growing political, economic, and cultural
importance of Asia. To give one example, in 2005-06 the number of non-ethnic Koreans in our beginning
Korean language courses exceeded the number of ethnic Korean Americans for the first time.
The Department’s goals in undergraduate education are to provide students with the best possible
training in the languages and cultures of Asia, and to help students develop critical thinking and writing
skills through the in-depth study of pre-modern and modern Asian cultures from broad historical and
comparative perspectives. The Department’s commitment to undergraduate education can be measured in
any number of ways, including the extremely high evaluations of our courses and instructors given by our
students, the creation of new courses and the frequent reworking of syllabi by many of our faculty in
response to changes in their fields, the regular offering of writing intensive courses, active faculty
participation in the University’s Cluster Course program, a series of year-long interdisciplinary courses
for freshmen designed to allow them to get intensive exposure to varying approaches to knowledge and to
meet many General Education requirements, the comprehensive restructuring of the Department’s majors
and minors, and the hiring of a second Student Affairs Officer to handle our burgeoning numbers of
undergraduate students.
The Structure of the Department’s Undergraduate Program
At the time of the last eight-year review, the Department offered programs leading to B.A. degrees in
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and also housed the interdisciplinary East Asian Studies major. As a
result of a number of factors, including growth in the number of faculty, increasing student interest in our
programs, and the relocation of the East Asian Studies major to the International Institute, in 2001-02, the
Department implemented a major restructuring of its majors and minors. That restructuring had two
major features. One was the creation of new majors in Asian Humanities (within which students can opt
to focus on China, Japan, Korea, South Asia or Southeast Asia) and Asian Religions, and the creation of
minors in Asian Humanities and Asian Languages (within which students can opt to focus on Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, South Asian and Southeast Asian). The other was the effort, to the extent possible, to
make requirements uniform across the various majors while ensuring that students acquire substantial
training in both language and culture.
The Department is currently considering options for revising the requirements of the Chinese,
Japanese, and Korean majors. As a consequence of the Department’s inability to fill key positions, such
as Korean literature and Meiji era Japanese literature, and the fact that in any given year 4-5 or more
faculty are on leave and 4-5 faculty have course reductions because of service in such positions as center
or program directors, it has become increasingly difficult for our undergraduate majors to get all the
courses required for their majors. The main thrust of the revisions will be to give students more options
in selecting upper division courses by, for example, reducing the number of required literature courses
and allowing students to select courses in such areas as religion, history, or folklore. The Department
expects to finalize its decisions during Fall 2008.
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